 Welcome, everyone. This morning's speaker is a pilot, an instructor, a writer, a speaker, and a humorist. He's wonderful to listen to. He's lots of fun. However, what Mark has to say today is a very serious message about flight instruction and about pilot decision-making. Please welcome Mark Grady. Thank you very much. Good to see you again, Kathleen. Welcome to the F.A. Safety Center. For those of you watching on the World Wide Web Live here at Sun & Fun, I wish you were here with us, but we do have a somewhat live studio audience with us today. For those of you watching at home on DVD, it may not be live, but just like it is, I'm going to have a little bit of fun today. Big thank you to the F.A. Safety Team and the F.A. Safety Center here in Lakeland, Florida. A big special thank you to the folks at the F.A. Production Studios here. All of these and all these cameras up in that ominous-looking booth upstairs with Obi Young and Hugh and the crew up there directing all this are the volunteer crew members that are making this possible for you at home to watch this on the Internet and also to have this stream all over the world to pilots to help them become a little bit safer. Let's give the F.A. Production Team a big hand for their work and what they're doing here in Florida. Also, how many of you have been to F.A.Safety.gov? Have you gotten there and got signed up? If not, that is the way to find out about local safety seminars coming to your area. Please go there. You simply put in an e-mail address, how far you're willing to travel and it will tell you, give you e-mail safety alerts about how you get to that particular area and where those safety seminars are. Now, I travel all over the country and talk to pilots and every once in a while we hear a few of them say, I don't want to give the F.A. my e-mail address. Well, that's all right. You don't have to worry about that. Just simply go there periodically and look up these events, put in your zip code how far you're willing to travel. We just have to remember to do that periodically. Of course, the Internet is a valuable tool and as far as aviation safety is concerned, we certainly found that out at the AOPA Air Safety Foundation. As a matter of fact, let's go back to AOPA headquarters and find out what you can find in the area of safety education online on the Internet. Tough to stay up to speed. Fortunately, staying current just got a whole lot easier. That's because the AOPA Air Safety Foundation has developed an easy-to-use website that puts all our resources right at your fingertips, www.asf.org is the source for busy pilots who want the best in safety education without all the hassle. You can take full F.A.A. approved online courses, test your knowledge with self-scoring quizzes, research accident reports, or catch up on the latest airspace changes right in your own home. And the best part is, it's all free. Let's take a look. Suppose you want to learn how to get the most from your handheld GPS. Just go to the online courses page and click on GPS for VFR operations. Or if your weather IQ isn't quite what it should be, you might want to check out our weather-wise courses. They're designed to help you stay on Mother Nature's good side. Maybe you're a flat lander hoping to learn about mountain flying. Or maybe you'd like to know more about your airplane's engine, how it works, and how to keep it running smoothly. Whatever the topic, our easy-to-use online courses put the latest multimedia technology to work to get you up to speed. But that's not all. Our online accident database makes it easy to learn from others' mistakes. And because it's cross-reference to AOPA's online airport directory, AOPA members can use the database to find out what kinds of accidents have taken place at their cross-country destinations. If you're looking for print publications, our entire library of safety advisors and special reports is online, too. Want to learn more about icing? Avoiding thunderstorms? Fuel management? Operating a tower at airports? It's all there. If you're taking instruction, you might want to check out our research on the truth about safety and instructional flying, or maybe our report on the safety of technically advanced aircraft. We've even got downloadable flashcards to help you brush up on airspace or runway safety. Staying current is just as important as it ever was. Thanks to the AOPA Air Safety Foundation website, it's gotten a whole lot easier. www.asf.org. Give it a try. You won't believe what you've been missing. How many of you have ever been online and taken one of our online courses? A slew of you. Fantastic. And there's a new one on there, which is GPS for IFR operations, quickly becoming one of the most popular downloadable courses on the internet. Go check it out. I think you'll really enjoy it. Sure, it's good to be back in Florida and sun and fun after taking a year off last year. One more person we want to thank, or a special delegation here today. We have a special guest with us here at the production studio. A delegation from Costa Rica, captain, senior captain Rod and his wife. Thank you. Let's give them a hand. Coming up from that beautiful country. It's good to have you with us today. And welcome to Sun and Fun. I hope you're enjoying yourself so far when you're down here. As Kathleen told you, my name is Mark Grady and I'm from North Carolina if you can't tell that already, but it's good to be here. And I'll tell you, one thing Kathleen didn't tell you that's probably a little bit scary when you find this out is I have over 6,000 hours in assessment of 152. Now you can imagine the counter response I get from people when they find that out. My favorite response of all time is there's a safety similar heckler that shows up in Rochester, New York at all the seminars. And when he found out I had 6,000 hours in 152 he hollered out and he said, hey, was that before or after your check ride? So as you can imagine, I said, that's all right. We got a good sense of humor in North Carolina. I did arrange for him to be ramp checked the next day. It's good to have friends at the FAA. All that time wasn't from instructing. It was from being an airborne traffic watch pilot reporter for 10 years in Raleigh, North Carolina. So I did a lot of flying around over a small geographic area, watching people rung into each other. It was a lot of fun. But one of the neat things and especially a lot of new pilots always think this is really cool is these companies would come to town and they want to show off their equipment or give us to give them a free plug. So they bring these really unique flying machines with them and then they would want me to fly it and they give me free instruction and I'd do these reports. And so one of the neatest flying machines ever flew in my life was this one. Anybody know type aircraft? Hey, this is the Blockbuster Video Blimp and I've got time in this thing and this changed my life as far as flying is concerned, especially with air traffic control. Matter of fact, I used to tell the controllers in Raleigh area, you better be nice to me or I'll come back and shoot an ILS in this thing. It takes about 45 minutes to shoot a full ILS in the Blockbuster Video Blimp. It was a lot of fun. Oh, one thing brand you want to tell you about, I know this is a big title, AOPA Accident Forgiveness and Deductible Waiver Enhancement Program. What does that mean? Well, what it means is insurance company is starting to find out and they've known this that pilots who participate in regular safety training are safer pilots and we got our insurance company on board. If you're an AIG policy holder, listen closely to this. If you attend one Air Safety Foundation Safety Seminar, either live or on the internet every six months, then what are you going to get for that? Well, if you're an AIG policy holder, they're going to give you an accident forgiveness plus deductible wage up to $100. Every little bit helps folks and this is a great program to find out more about it. You have to fill in a registration certificate you'll have on the back table and turn that in and you'll get your certificate for attending the program today. Please fill out the cards. It looks a little bit different from this. We've got a special version here at Sun and Fun but fill that out and make sure you fill that out today. So don't forget AIG policy holders, fill out and turn in that registration card today. If you want some more information on this, just simply go to asf.org accident forgiveness and you'll get all the details about this brand new program. All right, we're here to talk today about doing the right thing. Now, when I first heard the title of the program they were working on at the AOPA Air Safety Foundation, I got to thinking about the old character actor Wilfred Brimley. Remember him? You remember when we used to do the Quaker Oats commercials? They used to say, how do you stand that commercial? It's the right thing to do. In a weird kind of way, I got to thinking that's very similar to the decision-making of pilots. Wilfred Brimley made the point that, you know, we may know we're supposed to eat right. We may know we're supposed to do certain things as far as our diet is concerned but putting that into practical use isn't always that easy, is it? So today we're gonna talk about trying to make that diet and aviation a little safer just like we need to eat right when we're trying to set the table as well. You know, you don't have to even read NTSB reports. Just look at photographs of accidents and you can determine that probably aeronautical decision-making was involved. Remember this one? This was at Boeing Field in Seattle where that guy got tangled up in that 150 coming into power lines. Now, I'll tell you something. I get picked on so much about having so much time in the 150 and 152 but I wasn't glad this happened but I was glad of the outcome of it because they got a bucket truck up to this guy and this airplane got him out virtually no damage to the pilot whatsoever and the amazing thing is they came back the next day, got the airplane out of the power lines and there was virtually no damage to the aircraft. Make fun of a 150 now, huh? It's like a Timex, man. It's a great airplane. So it's a great one. Big boys make mistakes. I always wondered in the next shot what the debriefing was after this incident. Hope there wasn't any brass riding in that jeep is all I got to say cause that guy got in big trouble. And you know, even passengers on board aircraft practice poor aeronautical decision making. Don't believe it? Look at this. You know, people feel if there's a button or something they just got, as they say down south, mash it. And as a result, the results are not always pretty, are they? Here's why we're here today and why we have a whole hour set aside for those of you watching at home on the web and for those of you that are here today to talk about aeronautical decision making the numbers speak for themselves. Look at this. In the all accident and fatal accident categories, 76% of the time we get in trouble in general aviation is the result of poor, not just pilot error, but judgment related pilot error. That's scary, isn't it? To know that it's our fault when we get in trouble that much time. In reality, these numbers are in TSB numbers, but in reality they're even a little higher than this. Why? Because of the fact that some accidents are placed in categories. One of the big ones is spatial disorientation. And that's where a pilot's getting a little bit of trouble. The accident's blamed on spatial disorientation, but in reality, what's the real reason? Well, the pilot had poor aeronautical decision making that got them in to this spatial disorientation situation in the first place. So things have changed. You know, up to the early 40s, a lot more accidents were blamed directly on the aircraft themselves. Why? Well, aeronautical engineering isn't evolving science. Aircraft engines today are a lot more dependable than they were up until the early 40s, aren't they? So we kind of fixed that problem. Another thing was the issue of dealing with the situation of the actual equipment on board the airplane and getting information to pilots. So now we don't have a problem with that thanks to the internet and all this information directly beamed into the cockpit of the airplane with this overlay information of GPS. It is right there in front of you and this has helped a little big in the weather avoidance area, but there's still problems. One side note, I don't want to get in a lot of decision making about GPS. We have a whole standalone seminar on that, but let me warn you about something. Overdependence on that technology without the proper training is not good decision making either, is it? You know, air traffic control tells us that the number of times a general aviation pilot has to ask them for help has reduced substantially in the past of seven or eight years. Why? The number one reason is GPS. Pilots aren't getting lost as often, but ATC also tells us that when a general aviation pilot who is using GPS gets lost anyway, they get lost big time. As a matter of fact, ATC, I was talking to a guy at Atlanta Center, he said, Mark, I was working this fella and he popped up on 121.5, declared an emergency, he was lost, and he confessed that the four AA batteries and his hang-held transceiver had died and he didn't even know what state he was flying over at the time. He said that guy was just blindly following that magenta line from God on that screen, and when that thing died, he didn't have a clue where he was. So be careful about decision making. So the problem we've got today is what? It is a human problem. And the tough part about dealing with this myself and as all of us as aviators is this, we've got to remember that we can be our own worst enemy in airplane. How many of you believe that? How many of you really believe it? I hope you do. Hey, if you don't think we're capable of being our own worst enemy, watch this. Now here's a scary question for you. How many of you know pilots like this? This is the part that I don't wanna get into. Well anyway, just gotta be careful we're flying around. You know what's at risk? Isn't it sad that in reality, we've got a situation where it's hard to convince pilots to do the right thing just for the safety reasons? Isn't that sad? It's just like when people speed on the highways and on the interstates and traveling quickly around the country too fast, you have to slow them down by finding them or tell them they're gonna get some other trouble. We've got more at risk other than just putting ourselves in danger if we don't get this decision making accident right down or putting the people we love inside the airplane in danger as well. We don't want that to happen. It's good decision making. Now I just got married a couple of weeks ago. My wife was in here. She's a pilot and an A and P and one of the things that we, if I ever had her in the airplane with me, it makes you get a little extra cautious. You got somebody you love on board. Same with the children on board, the airplane, you worry a little bit more but we need to remember we're putting the whole pilot population and freedom to fly at risk. You know our nighttime accident rate is so high that there's actually some hierarchy folks in the aviation world who think we ought to do away with nighttime VFR in the United States. Do we want that to happen to us? Absolutely not and believe it or not, the solution to this is pretty simple. Don't ever, ever, ever go into an airport at night you haven't been into before, especially a non-towered airport without talking to somebody there who has. As simple as that because there's all these tricks of the trade terrain and features around that airport just getting a briefing could save your life. And you know every single ruling regulation that goes into federal aviation regulations and all that book is loaded as a result of poor decision making by pilots. Usually that's the case or a mistake. They have to put the fire out by creating a regulation. We don't want additional regulation so we've got to be careful. Knowing however that 100% almost of all those regulations the result of a pilot doing something wrong that may or somebody doing something wrong aboard an airplane, I fly a lot on airlines now to have to get around to the seminars. I always wondered where did that placard inside the airlines come from knowing that that says on the doors do not open in flight? Where did that come from? Some guys say honey, I'll be back in just a minute. We got us a placard, you know, that's the way that works. Three main reasons we get in trouble in general aviation, expecting too much out of the airplane is one of them. And for you lady pilots in here this is predominantly a male issue so you can pat yourself on the back but after that it all changes. We're all guilty after this of the others. Not enough ability in the airplane and the most important one is this we're having too much fun in aviation to pay attention to all the intimate details you got to be careful. And why are we getting in this situation? We've targeted one of the number one issues as pilots do not invest enough in proficiency training. That's sad, isn't it? I mean to know that. And you know, most of us look at the Banneal Flight Review or they call it Flight Review now is some kind of test that the FAA makes us do from time to time and we just say gosh we had to go back and be tested and that's true. But if you want a good flight review the best way to do it is don't look at it as a test but an opportunity to work on it. And if in 76% of the time or more we get in trouble in general aviation it's our decision making this at fault. It isn't a good idea to go ahead and look at the flight review as an opportunity to work on those weak areas. We all have them and there's your opportunity. Plus another thing airplanes aren't as capable as we'd like to believe sometime. Knowing your aircraft well, most of us and I've been guilty of this at times you read that pilot operating handbook enough to get through the initial testing and you rarely look at it again. But that's something that requires constant review because we forget over a period of time how much we do forget. You know we lack in general aviation a lot of rigid regulations, standard operating procedures that by nature make the airline safer. We do. But that doesn't mean we can't put some of those lessons learned from them to practice for ourselves. Another factor involved in general aviation we can't be all above average pilots. This is where the training and initial experience level is taking place. Another thing we gotta be careful of is believing all our own press. I mean if you look at the trends the accident rate was up a little bit if you read the Nall report from the AOPA Air Safety Foundation last year but overall the trend is for general aviation to be safer over a period of time. But that can lead to complacency and that's a dangerous disease, isn't it? Matter of fact, how safe is it in general aviation? The numbers are really pretty encouraging. We took an hour and a half flight saying that's an average leg for a pilot to make or an hour and a half of flying around on a Saturday afternoon or whatever and we said what's the risk during that hour and a half flight? Wanna see the numbers? Here they are. Your flight odds are pretty good. Your chance of having any accident during that hour and a half flight is .000935 to one. Pretty doggone good, huh? And your chance of having a fatality .000180 to one. But you see after you've done the same thing over and over again for a long period of time and nothing happening, this is where that complacency bug gets into us and bites us. You wanna hear scary number two that really emphasizes this point? Do you know that ATP rated pilots have more than twice as many stall spin accidents than student pilots? In fact, the number one pilot category for stall spin accidents, commercial pilots. That's scary, isn't it? What's the problem there? It's complacency, no doubt about it. So we've met the problem today. How do we fix it? Well, people who don't fly say, hey, that's easy, just quit flying. We don't wanna do that. This is a country based on freedoms and folks in aviation absolutely love it. We want to get the best we can out of our airplanes. We don't want to become statistics in the process. So how do we reconcile all this and get better at decision making? Well, one of the things we got to remember is experience isn't always the best teacher in the aviation world, is it? You want maybe somebody else's experience and that's why the most widely read aviation articles and longest running in aviation magazines is I learned about flying from that and flying and never again in AOPA pilot magazine. We're reading where pilots confess that they've made mistakes and to keep you from making the same mistake. Bruce Landsberg, our executive director of the Air Safety Foundation said this and I thought this was great. I'd never do something that stupid again and unfortunately that's the way a lot of us learn. Now sadly, what we got to remember too is we're all capable. There's not a single person in this room if you've been flying for any length of time at all, including myself, that hasn't done something, right? It may not have been life-threatening. It may have been a simple mistake but we're all capable of it and that brings me to a real important point I hope you take here home today from this if nothing else. If I could get to every pilot in the country as a safety guy and try to convince them of this I believe we can change the whole attitude about flying and substantially reduce this safety rate and that's this folks listen closely please. It does not matter how many hours we've gotten our logbook. It doesn't matter how many years we've been flying. Doesn't make any difference how many different types of aircraft we've been flying. The bottom line is that we are all human and capable of making a mistake. Now if you remember that and take it with you from the time you do your pre-flight planning to you tie the airplane down and get back into your automobile and leave the airport you're gonna change the way you approach the decision-making as a pilot and I think we can bring down this accident rate. If you don't think big boys in complacency can come bite you how many of you remember this incident? 1994, Fairchild Air Force based sad situation talk about setting up for poor decision-making this pilot was in a base he normally wasn't based at and he had his wife at the airport they're preparing to do a little air demonstration at the airport he had crew members on board the airplane that normally didn't fly with him so what happened? He's got a show to put on. I'll tell you what's scary there's a video clip with this with the video clips grainy it's much more powerful to see one clip taking a one photo extracted from that video clip and it tells the story doesn't it? And no survivors that little dot you see just to the right of the aircraft that's where somebody tried to punch out he didn't make it either but you know the results of this when this accident occurred people came from out of the woodwork to tell the Air Force investigators that this pilot had an attitude problem it wasn't the aircraft attitude it was his and that brings us to another point and this is tough you don't want to step on our own feet or step on our shoes but if we're going to bring down this accident rate we have to do this self-evaluation thing that can make us a safer pilot folks the most dangerous absolutely most dangerous attitude we can have in the cockpit of any flying machine is arrogance there's a big difference between confidence and arrogance and I hope you know that unfortunately you watch all these old aviation movies it looks like arrogance is just supposed to be part of a pilot's demeanor no it's not it's supposed to be something that we don't want to ever infect us in aviation we want to be the good guys but confidence different confidence means you know what you can do but just as importantly you know what you can't do when you're in the airplane so we don't make similar mistakes here's what we're going to do today the FA has given me permission to have everybody in our studios here and if you're watching at home on the World Wide Web that's great too we want you to participate in watching some scenarios here because scenario based training it's been discovered works well why? because you get the whole big picture you don't have to sit home and just look at the writing on the walls or the NTSB reports they're written by nature and legalese and try to determine what really happened you get to watch a pilot making the decision making talking about the flight and so we're going to take you on a little VFR flight this morning and we're going to watch this pilot see his decision making process at work see the motivation for making the flight watch him closely and let's see if you can help this guy become a little bit of a safer pilot first of all let's meet him and find out a little bit about his background and where he's going so he can make things a little bit safer with this whoops let me see if I can get this clip to rerun again sorry about that I think it's coming up here but this guy's got a real interesting background and we'll find this out in a minute here it comes he's a private pilot he has no instrument rating and he has 225 hours total time is that important to know? I hope it is he's going to be flying a 172 that is IFR equipped and he's not with an handheld GPS he's going from Quincy, Illinois down to Warnton, Virginia he's planned to fuel stop in Ohio let's meet him and hear his story it had been a really tough week on Wednesday I found out my favorite Uncle Max had died of a heart attack he was really close I didn't fly into my hometown in Illinois for the funeral still not quite sure why I had decided to fly myself all the way out there from DC maybe I just needed some time alone to think things through maybe I was hoping the flight would be the one bright spot of the weekend I thought I'd be able to leave right after the funeral but there were so many relatives there I got caught answering questions about work wife, kids, the pets and you came in when I realized how late it had gotten I made a quick trip to the airport and climbed into 172 I had to get home that night because my wife Emily and I were leaving for Vegas the next day we've been planning the trip for months luxury hotel, all you can eat a phase I've had Elvis impersonators the whole nine yards oh and did I mention the non-refundable airline ticket? I wasn't about to miss that flight I wanted to go of course but Emily was really looking forward to some time away I just didn't want to screw things up by being late I was tired and a little upset after the funeral so it probably wasn't the best way to start off the weather started out looking pretty good the forecast said I'd probably run into a scattered layer between India Dayton but it was supposed to stay up around 2,000 feet and I figured I could always drop down through if it started to fill in there was a chance of some isolated thunderstorms popping up later in the afternoon but I didn't really think that'd be a big deal I thought I'd be home by the time they mounted to anything the problem was that the weather was supposed to get worse later that night and then stay bad for a couple days probably stuck if I didn't get home that day so I took off and things were looking pretty good clear skies smooth as glass when I was about two hours from my fuel stop I remember thinking to myself man this is going to be one seriously boring trip anyway I I was maybe an hour and a half from my fuel stop at Green County when I noticed that scattered layer of white service had told me about it didn't really look like much so I didn't think I'd have any trouble getting there I just land, get some gas, check the weather and launch again a while later I was kind of zoned out when I happened to glance outside cloud layer was filling in fast I thought wow that doesn't look so good so I decided I'd better check the weather wind 220 at 8 feeling broken 1200 visibility 4 altimeter 2987 that sounded kind of bad I mean I was shocked by how fast that cloud layer closed up I was kicking myself for not paying more attention to what was going on outside I was still too far out to pick up the AWAS at Green County so I had no idea if things were any better there but it didn't look promising on one hand I was thinking that I should drop a load of clouds right there because I didn't want to get trapped on top on the other hand those holes really didn't look very big and I hadn't had any instrument flying since my private check ride if I drop down now I'd have to worry about towers and airplanes and well I just was nervous about scud running the rest of the way and there was a chance the clouds would clear up if it started to get worse I could always come down I didn't know what to do okay this fellow's got himself in a little bit of a pickle here doesn't he no doubt about it and so what do we do to try to get this pilot safer first of all what was the motivation for making the flight are you watching that get-home-itis we've talked about ad nauseam in the in the aviation world materialized before your very eyes absolutely was it a good day for this guy to be making a flight probably not he's under stress he lost his favorite uncle and sometimes we may think and we've all probably thought this at some point during your flying life man it just seems that life is when you fly all your troubles just seem to stay on the ground you know the key two words in that phrase is seem to they really don't you're just distracted from them for a while as long as nothing happens during that flight is uneventful everything goes routinely probably nothing will happen but if something bad does happen during that flight chances are you're emotionally over taxed and here comes the bad decision making process so this guy's got himself in a pickle though that's getting in the air now he's got a situation he can't do a 180 it's gotten worse behind him he sees this cloud deck kind of rapidly filling in he's got one little hole below that he can kinda sneak down and get below this thing or he can take the risk if he wants to of continuing to fly on and see if something gets better so what do you think he should do should this guy go ahead and descend now and get underneath while he's got a hole or should he take the risk to stay on top remembering this guy has no instrument rating has no hood work since he took his check ride what should he do somebody hollow it out for me descend now that's alright let's go back and meet with our pilot here and let's give him this decision from you and see what happens let's give him your decision and see what happens to him along the flight and see if it's the right decision to make the sectional didn't show any tall towers in the area the ground was pretty flat so I decided I'd be better off to go ahead and drop below the clouds right there I started to descend and pretty soon I spotted a hole that looked big enough cloud clearances weren't my number one concern pretty soon I was thinking this is not as big as it looked then I actually got in the clouds for a few seconds that had me in a minor panic but I managed to get myself under control and fly the airplane just like that honestly at the time kind of a rush all through your training everybody's constantly telling you to stay away from the clouds so when you get in them the first time you're pretty much expecting something horrible to happen right away I got in there at the time I thought it was kind of neat a little scary but neat when I got down below it was pretty cruddy couldn't see very far and the clouds above me were really close I knew it was legal but I was pretty uncomfortable I decided I'd better turn on the landing light and really keep my eyes peeled for other airplanes but I didn't end up having any real trouble getting in even the landing went well I wasn't thrilled about the way things are gone but I was feeling okay alright he took your advice he made it down to the runway but what happened during this phase of the flight that sets him up big time for poor decision making in later flights he got away with it he did it and think about his confidence level that this guy that this pilot our fellow aviator did his ability to make wise decisions on whether drop immediately to his weather minimums drop yeah he got away with it he's been bit by this big bug I've done it before and folks that's what get pilots the good news in decision making is this pilots do not go out and make poor decisions when it's very obvious you just don't see general aviation pilots as a rule of thumb go out and launch in level five thunderstorms what usually happens is it's a lot more insidious where it's marginal stuff that comes back and bites us you know gps is messing with us in that too air traffic control sees a lot more pilots squawking twelve hundred the vfr code in marginal vfr conditions than ever before why our confidence levels up we used to think we wouldn't go flying in those kind of conditions because we're afraid of running to another airplane or the tower or something no we were scared to get lost and now we got magic box on board we launch out and head for those areas it can be kind of scary so don't over depend on that now if he had stayed on top and uh... this is a of our version of a two-hour seminar we want to show you the clip but in this particular scenario which you can go and see online you can go take a look and you'll see that the same thing happens again he gets he makes it he looks up against an airplane whose confidence level is skewed for future flights he's at his fuel stop in green county ohio's let's go meet with him there a little bit and let's watch the process of decisions that makes him decide whether he's going to continue this flight or stay on the ground so let's see what happens while he's at the fb at the fb the radar was showing as isolated thunderstorms they talked about earlier but it didn't look like they were going to amount to much they seem to be dissipating as they move north and the heavier cells are staying off to the south the metars and pasts looked about the same as before broken layer between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred some of the stations were still calling it scattered disabilities around five miles not great but i figured i've been able to handle it so far big meals and biggest lobsters i ever saw well i'm in pretty good shape considering about yourself doing well will you be visiting with us for the evening uh... nope headed back to warrenton virginia back in the late fifties they used to do some charter work and converted what you'd been sure of had a regular passengers more yep those were some good times man i could stand here and tell you about those days for hour after hour anyway remember one night we launched out of Baltimore headed for pettisburg takeoffs and that old bird always a thrill i mean you'd push those big prats up to fifty five inches and she'd flat and go and at night if you look back you can see the exhaust lane shoot past the trailer and into the wing anyway we launched out of Baltimore headed for pettisburg and old joe engels is fine you've been a flyaway boxing champion in New York so you didn't want to mess with it that's the story of how i became the only man ever to land a lucky ventura in downtown latrone pennsylvania what do you think of that oh that's quite a story you bet it is but i don't want to take up your time are you planning to go IFR uh... no i'm not instrumentated uh... you know if you ask my advice you'd better be careful it doesn't look so good out there just tell me here you can always trust the storms to come up faster than you think it can't much in, you know, i mean you're playing hell getting out i need to get home i didn't have much trouble getting in here the weather looks like it's gonna be about the same tell you what if i was you i'd just call it a day get a cold six pack in the motel room these people here will be glad to drive you over if you ask yeah well uh... thanks but i think i'm gonna go up and take a look anyway i mean there are quite a few airports between here and there things get worse well, you should be careful, you don't want to smack into a mountain between here and there to tell you the truth i was a little annoyed with pops back there i know the guy meant well but on some level i resented the lecture i already knew the weather wasn't very good it did have a point though the weather could get worse and i was going to be flying over some mountainous terrain plus i was tired and starting to get a headache but i wasn't ready to give up yet writing off a thousand bucks worth of airline tickets and my vacation and disappointing my wife was definitely an argument to be made for trying to get a bit closer to home i could get within a couple hundred miles at least i could rent a car and drive the rest of the way wasn't an easy choice okay let's talk about his decision-making process here did this guy do anything right during his stop there at the FBO he checked the weather it looked like he did a pretty decent pre-flight do you know that can even build some false confidence with us if we think we go through the proper procedures then everything must be okay don't let that happen to you but despite getting that new weather briefing and taking the time to go online and check the current weather what was the best briefing he got from all pops you know if you get a hold of this guy you want to tell him hey look there's a reason pops is old he's been through some things he's probably learned the hard way plus that weather briefing he gave as a local pilot was extremely important remember what he said about the thunderstorms they always pop up faster than usual or faster than forecast around here we need to listen to those folks so he's at that point now where he's kind of almost frustrated that he show a little bit of touch of that arrogance thing as a result of his reaction to pops yes he did and yet he should have been listening to him so should this guy what should he do stay the night or should he go up even take the risk of going up and taking a look no stay on the ground and that's so let's go ahead and let's go back and give him that decision that he takes pops advice he said I'll tell you what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna spend the night here and do what pops said let's see what happens if he makes that decision yeah I changed my mind it doesn't look very good out there right now yeah that's probably a good idea uh... the guy who's here earlier said somebody might be able to give me a ride to the motel great it was actually kind of funny when john called to tell me he was gonna have to stay overnight he acted like he thought I was gonna start yelling at him but he sounded relieved when I told him the truth but I'm glad he decided to stay put of course I was disappointed but it's not like I can't deal with the change of plans I hadn't even been thinking about the weather but when he told me it might be tough to get across the mountains I was like thank goodness you're gonna stay in a hotel I see the plane crashes on the news it seems like they're more than lately I know John is a good pilot but it scares me to think of him taking chances in an airplane especially over something like a couple of airline tickets see all of his fears of trying to please one person were really unwarranted because I know sometimes we feel pressure I've even read the full NTSB report on the JFK junior accident if you did you found out that there was pressure to please during that disastrous flight as well but remember somebody really loves you they want you to do the right thing I know sometimes we get picked on about that guy's wife's reaction and not everybody's wife would be quite that understanding in fact I was doing this seminar in Portland, Oregon and a guy hollered out where is she at but in all reality we want to be safe we want them to be safe and so please be careful and remember don't let people affect they can have an amazing effect on you in the aircraft and on the ground and there's been studies to prove that I can stay here and give you a true anecdotal evidence to back that up all day but we just don't have time now if he decided to continue on the problem with this decision is this is that he would be making a poor decision even to go up to take a look because pilots even make worse aeronautical decision-making once they're already in the air and we'll talk about that in just a minute this situation here is typical that gets us in trouble in general aviation we if we have a trip that we perceive is extremely important and we're on the borderline as far as the risk of concern whether it's marginal we may have to do a little scud running or whatever in other words it's possible we may make it okay then it's easier to take the chance so be careful stay away from that mission mindset we call it you know don't you're not flying a kidney to somebody in most cases what would you say to an NTSB investigator if you're still around a really important question to ask yourself is part of the decision-making before you make every flight is this one will this really matter a month from now think about that a lot of things that today seem so important so devastating you go to sleep and wake up the next day in the big scheme of things they just didn't seem that investigating believe it or not decision-making you can do it well and we have the tools and education to perform and if you try to skip by it and try to hide around the decision-making process eventually the truth will come out I don't care how good you are performing anybody seen the cop car cameras they have today why do they and they're even wearing a little while wireless microphones like I have now it's amazing how people can do some remarkable performances as far as getting in in a situation this is a female sheriff's deputy pulled over this guy from texas and by her own admission she said she got a little bit trouble over this because she had never pulled over a genuine character from texas before and she thought he was a hoot and she put him through a little bit more of the rigor than she normally does in a routine a potential DWI traffic stop and this guy did a remarkable job considering the pressure he was under but eventually the moral of this story is the truth comes out what's this well I'm great I'm doing okay I'm not so good because you were weaving all over the road there well can we get one thing straight? I have not been making okay right hands in the nose with the left hand back out I need you to recite the alphabet from Z to A backwards as fast as you can from Z to A? yeah Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A alright remarkable I've actually never seen anybody do that oh my bladder is full I'm not worried about your bladder right now okay alright well you got a pretty good balance thank you I want you to step bump step bump bump step bump step bump bump five six seven eight step bump step bump bump step bump step bump bump pot of beret kick ball change step clap okay five six seven eight you know what would be good is if you get kicked and then you kind of get down in a barrel turn and then ha! you know that was good that was really good you a dancer? no no no no not a I'm just drunk folks I told you eventually the truth comes out don't try to cheat or you'll get called at it eventually you know what good aeronautical decision-making wherever you call it it's all about doing the right thing at the right time even if nobody's watching you on television or capturing on video that's what it's all about decision-making is also as much about staying away from the tough calls as it is learning to make them now this quote was attributed to an anonymous author I believe is actually the person who wrote stick and rudder said this and it's a great one superior pilots use their superior judgment to avoid situations requiring the use of their superior skills in other words you're well trained you know how to get out of trouble but more importantly why we try to avoid getting in that situation in the first place don't we are you legal it's amazing how many people make the decision purely based on is it legal uh... Ernest Gann the guy who was the right great author of fate is the hunter and other great books rule books are made of paper they will not cushion an unexpected meeting of rock and aluminum will they you know it's amazing how easy is to make those decisions based on legalities you go up to a major class bravo airport in general the inner rings about seven miles so you can fly seven and a half miles around this major busy metropolitan airport and as long as you're underneath the altitude of the second ring you don't have to talk to anybody that's legal but is it safe it's incredible well the story somebody may ask me to tell here today and i hate to repeat things if you've been here before and talk about it is a great illustration of of hanging trouble with this legal versus safe i get picked on by my son about my diet all the time and fact he came home from schools to schools fault i blame them because they send him home with that food pyramid thing you know and he got in the car picked him up the little circle driver school is a dad you don't eat right so see that put me in a bad position at home now i have to set a good example for him by eating right but one reason i took this job is i get to travel and while i'm away from him i had every one of those cracker barrel restaurants in north america cause he's not there to watch me so i sitting in one one day and i got i did pretty good i thought i got biscuits and gravy and bacon and hash brown i i did get a diet coke so give me a little credit but there's a guy sitting beside me about a table away and he started looking at me you know when you're my size people say anything to you they realize not like this guy can walk us so let's go ahead and say anything and sitting there in this guy's watching me and all of a sudden he said hey buddy i didn't know him i said yes sir he said you have any idea what all that junk is doing to your body i said sir my grandfather lived to be ninety four years old and he said eating such as that i said no sir from minding his own business see it was legal for me to say that but was it safe no i ended up running in my car in the parking lot scared of the fella but the bottom line is is not just because it's legal doesn't mean it's safe another great question to ask yourself could you pass your private pilot check ride today you on a humbling experience go to the f a a dot gov website and pull up the test bank questions for the private pilot quiz you'll be surprised how much we forget just over a period of time and that's why this proficiency training is so important remember folks it is not about how many hours you've got in your log book it doesn't matter i'm emphasizing this again aren't i for a reason it doesn't matter how many years you've been flying or how many different types of aircraft we are all human you see how it works you see how easy it is to get in a situation where we're going to make poor decisions the more you know about yourself that's important the more you know about your aircraft the more you know about the flight and preparation the better prepared you are to make right choices and here i am again to us talk about technology again this gives us some trouble too in knowing all the information we can it's awfully easy to get to an aircraft and know that that new gps unit not only has the frequencies of all the airports you're flying on through or over at the time but also many of the new generations even have a situation where they have what the information as far as the whether or not the fbo is open at the hour that you're flying at that minute whether or not if they're not they have one of those gps are based on credit card machines to buy gas that's all in the gps unit so do you see how this can lead to a fault sense of security knowing that information is accessible to you and that technology in the aircraft may prevent us from doing better pre-flight planning the problem from that is yes that information is there but if you get in a full blown emergency in that aircraft and you have to come off of that screen that important navigation screen to start looking up information that we probably should have become prepared and noted before that happened that leaves us with losing a lot of valuable insurance in the form of time to handle that please don't let the technology mess with us as far as pre-flight planning is concerned just because it's in the airplane you know the go or no go thing most pilots do a good decision I told you we just don't go launching out into level five thunderstorms but once we're in the air aeronautical decision making deteriorates how many of you saw one of our aop air safety foundation seminars a few years ago called the last five miles anybody see it well if you did there was a very scary statistic in there and that is in 2004 every single accident 100% of them in 2004 took place within five miles of a destination airport or an airport the pilot was attempting to divert to that's scary isn't it and why because once we're in the air sometimes we may make the right decision to go but do we make the right decision on when to stop let me give you a scenario I use driving a lot haven't been a traffic watch pilot for so many years but I think it's also a good way to illustrate and prove to you and all of us how easy is to make bad decisions we've all been on trips on the car imagine this scenario you get a call your buddy's trying to find you say my lens I've been trying to find you you had your home phone cut off because you went to all cell we didn't have your cell number I've been trying to look for you my daughter is getting married Saturday they want you to be the best man the wedding I know it's Monday before Saturday but can you come and you say yeah I'll be there so you decide you're going to hit the road if they live 340 miles away when they move this in a new town you never been there before but you say I'll go so you think well Friday I'll get off work about four o'clock so I'll leave a little earlier before the five o'clock rush hour I'll hit the road I'm used to staying up to 10 or 11 o'clock at night anyway so it won't be too bad trip so four o'clock you head out on Friday man you've looked at the map it's all interstate all the way you're thinking this is it I'm on the road and you start driving now you even were such a detailed oriented as a pilot you even went to the DOT website in your state and you looked up if there was any road construction going on at that time to determine whether there's any problems you're going to hit and there was nothing there but you get a hundred miles up the road on that 325 mile trip and guess what's there road construction that didn't show up on the enter and you've got those orange and white barrels narrowed down to one lane and you're crawling through there you know what that does to you you see people walking by you a grocery cart you know on the interstate and you get man I could have walked fast your pressure the stress level starts going up you finally get on the other side of that and say thank goodness that's over you get another 50 miles up the road and here's a car accident let me tell you you don't have to be a traffic watch pilot to know what happens in a car wreck you know they have an emergency meeting of the international society of rubber neckers you have to slow down and look at every single detail of the accident scene right as they go by by the time you get on the other side of that you are tired you are wore out you feel it you know you get sensitive when you get fatigued you're feeling that car you've read triple a magazine said we'll roll the window down to get tired so you'll be you know have some wind blowing on you're so tired you're even listening to rap music on the radio that's how tired you are trying to jar yourself back away and you're wondering by this time how much further have I got to go finally one of those green mileage signs comes by and it says there's still 62 miles left to your trip let me ask you something in reality now some of you in this room may have an amazing ability to have that kind of decision-making skill and that kind of of a gumption to make that decision but i'm asking you as an overall worldwide view of things how many people do you think knowing they're that tired knowing that that sleepy still knowing that they have another hour left to that trip would go and pull off at the next exit and get a hotel room and try to finish that trip in the morning how many of us not many of us folks and this is the way we ought to be thinking these human factors are extremely important you know we all think it won't happen to us this is pictures a minute work if you don't think we're capable of making bad decisions take a look at this and it's absolutely incredible what decisions we make we're up there flying making even people at work look at this here's one think about that usually takes a minute on this one but that's the guy on the white shorts is from fema no i'm just kidding no i get me what about this one this is called the potential for convective activity right i love this one too check that out now not only look what the guy is doing to prop the truck up but look at what he's doing he's welding near the gas tank boy this is a good decision making it and folks listen the ntsb reports are loaded absolutely loaded with pilots who aren't here anymore are seriously injured because they thought it will never happen to me 76 percent of the time we get in trouble in aviation it's our fault and usually judgment related pilot error so if you live he leave here today from this seminar coming to conclusion of i need to be better at making decisions i need to take proficiency training very seriously there's a reason the airlines the reason the military pilots are safer is because they're forced to in general aviation we don't want to regulate that we certainly don't we don't want that happen to us as pilots but the same time if we go out and make these decisions on our own it'll work you know we have a dwindling pilot population in this country that's why i feel bored the president of a opa has put a new shot into the project pilot program trying to get you to introduce people to the world of aviation and i hope you go and take advantage of doing that at some point there is certainly a a reason for that and so we want to get involved with another thing that we can do to protect that uh that uh public perception of aviation is to keep these things in mind if we go out there and do something crazy in an airplane we are sending general aviation naysayers fan mail aren't we so we have an obligation not just to ourselves the people we fly over and the people who fly with us to be safe we also have an obligation to the whole rest of pilot community to try to be as safe as we possibly can we fly it can mean our freedom to fly one more note before i let you go i mentioned to you earlier that the most dangerous attitude for a pilot to have in a cockpit is arrogance folks please remember that can be our most dangerous detriment to public perception there's something interesting about human nature which was what we've been talking about all morning and that is when people meet somebody they think everybody in your group is like you you're been to a store and got waited on by a jerk you think the whole store is like that you don't like the store please remember this when somebody meets you and they find out that you're a pilot they think all pilots are like you please put on the white hat and become a goodwill ambassador for general aviation but people like us it's so much easier to sell them on our freedom to fly thanks to all of you one personal note it amazes me that you folks are here for those of you are watching at home just turn this on the worldwide web and you're watching these pilots came in on a beautiful day in florida to sit in on a safety seminar instead of being outside that speaks volumes about your character folks as pilots and as aviators we don't take that lightly thank you for coming and i hope you have fun at the rest of sun and fun for the weekend appreciate you coming today