“Relax. Loosen your muscles and sit quite calmly in your seat. And relax. That is the secret of enjoying flying from the first moment that you sit in an aeroplane.”
~ Wing Commander Nigel Tangye, Teach Yourself To Fly, 1938.
This was the first book in the Teach Yourself series. It was so good that in World War II the British Air Ministry recommended pilots to buy a copy, and Tangye was asked to train prospective RAF pilots.
The funny little book series rapidly expanded, the yellow and blue Teach Yourself books covered all kinds of subjects, selling millions of copies. It was the original For Dummies book series concept.
And the advice is solid. Flying with master glider pilot, and 5-time US Aerobatic champion, Jason Stephens I was hoping for advanced instruction. The real high-level secrets. “Relax,” he said. Sitting behind me he was watching my shoulders tense up. “Relax . . .
Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.
On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.
Engineer, physician, and astronaut Mae Jemison on thinking for yourself:
“Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations. If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won’t exist because you’ll have already shut it out… You can hear other people’s wisdom, but you’ve got to re-evaluate the world for yourself.”
Source: Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, November 2009.
“When you are a young person, you are like a young creek, and you meet many rocks, many obstacles and difficulties on your way. You hurry to get past these obstacles and get to the ocean.
But as the creek moves down through the fields, it becomes larges and calmer and it can enjoy the reflection of the sky. It’s wonderful. You will arrive at the sea anyway so enjoy the journey. Enjoy the sunshine, the sunset, the moon, the birds, the trees, and the many beauties along the way. Taste every moment of your daily life.”
OK, this might be a bit of a ‘one weird trick nobody knows’ clickbait avgeek troll headline — but this is a real paper on real research in a real journal. It’s in Safety Science, titled ‘An analysis of a pilot’s adherence to their personal weather minimums’, written by Professor Scott Winter et al.. Full citation at the end of the post. They studied certificated instrument pilots (who were also ERAU students) and how they adhered to both personal and FAA minimums while flying an ILS approach. The results were quite astonishing:
“The findings demonstrated 96.4% of participants descended below their stated personal weather minimums while 81.5% descended below the minimum published federal altitude.”
How did they do it? The research team at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, had 112 instrument-rated pilots fly an ILS approach in a simulator into low instrument meteorological conditions. What they didn’t know was the weather was set below minimums, forcing a missed approach. The simulator/research lab looked like this:
The purpose was to study whether pilots really adhere to stated ‘personal minimums’, which for these relatively inexperienced pilots (average total pilot time 264 hours) were higher than the absolute FAA minimums for the approach. I’d expect some non-compliance here, personal minimums are kind of aspirational, have a yeah yeah New Years Resolution feel to them. And it’s a simulator, no one is going to crash and die in a sim. Just a bit lower and I’ll show you how good a pilot I am! So 96% going below doesn’t surprise me.
But I’m very surprised that at real FAA minimums over 80% of the pilots kept descending. These are licensed instrument pilots, engaged in university research. Now, some were told they’d receive a possible $25 reward if a landing was completed, but that’s a lot less motivation than running out of gas or having to divert to an alternate and spend the night in a rubbish hotel. Still, $25 is a lot of money to an undergraduate student and it could welll tip the scales.
It didn’t The researchers report, “there was no significant difference in the lowest altitude which a pilot descended based on the external pressure condition for which they were assigned.” The four different conditions of financial or peer reward that were tested — made no difference. The story was the same with or without motivation to land:
“A high percentage of pilots (96.4%) descended by an average of 303 feet below their stated personal weather minimums for cloud ceiling (height), and 81.5% of pilots descended below the federal legal limit an average of 43 feet. All of these values are highly concerning.”
Six of the pilots never went around, and pushed on to a ‘landing’. The weather was 0 miles visibility 0 feet ceiling. Two of those six ended up in the grass next to the runway. Everybody received the $25 bonus.
The paper ends by saying “personal minimums only serve as a risk mitigation strategy if they are properly used, adhered to, and supported.” Not really surprising that almost every pilot blew past feels-good-to-say-it personal minimums.
What was surprising was the attempts to influence the pilot’s behaviour failed. Monetary or peer reward had no statistical influence on the altitude that missed approach was started. And the huge story is the overwhelming number of pilots that went below absolute minimums. This is Top Gun Maverick breaking the hard deck stuff. You don’t do it unless it’s some kind of two-engines-on-fire emergency.
