Right Seat: Fight on

Donnie’s text came across as both cautiously optimistic and self-critical. He led with the bad news. On his first solo flight in almost 30 years, Donnie had forgotten to retract the flaps on a touch-and-go and took off with full flaps in a 172. “I won’t do that again,” he wrote.

I flew with Donnie four or five times to help get him get current, and honestly, I didn’t do much. He was ready to be signed off for his flight review after the first flight. Ever careful and always self-effacing, Donnie has all the right characteristics of a safe and competent pilot. But his already minimal confidence to venture into the sky alone after decades away was now nearly gone.

A chance encounter in the hallway gave me a chance to give Donnie a pep talk. Forgetting to retract flaps is a classic example of something that happens to almost everyone but that we rarely, if ever, train for. Winston Churchill said, “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Most of our mistakes don’t require full-blown courage to overcome, but the sentiment is clear. The mistake will happen. How you deal with it will determine if you are a safe and successful pilot.

The mistake will happen. How you deal with it will determine if you are a safe and successful pilot.Donnie dealt with the situation perfectly. He didn’t panic, focused on flying the airplane, established a safe climb attitude, and slowly retracted the flaps. It was a chance to learn by experience and prove to himself that he has the ability to overcome challenges. He turned what could have been a problem into a nonevent.

It’s always easier to see these traits in others and offer advice than it is to have perspective with our own flying. That seems to be why some pilots, especially those who are new to flying, are reticent to offer up their own mistakes or shortcomings.

In that spirit, I was happy to share with Donnie my own terrible performance from just a day earlier. I’m still a relatively new helicopter pilot, and was taking a first flight demo in a helicopter new to me. Any aircraft transition is going to be somewhat of a learning experience, but mine turned out to be truly humbling.

As soon as we lifted off, the nose starting spinning. My hover area was double what is normal, and I was bobbing up and down like a buoy in choppy water. If all that weren’t bad enough, the helicopter is marketed as being easy to fly, and the instructor—who, by the way, is an Army Black Hawk pilot—had just finished telling me most of his students learn very quickly in this new ship. My traffic pattern was terrible, I completely missed my aiming point on the approach, and my hover autorotations were almost scary. In addition to the many points of correction, the instructor said “trim string” so often he sounded like a song playing on repeat.

It was an utterly terrible and embarrassing flight. Yet, I left pleased. I had the chance to fly a new machine, and my performance marginally improved over the lesson.

Mistakes will happen. You will mess up decisions, make bad landings, and occasionally take off with the wrong flap setting. The only question is whether you’ll have the courage to learn from your missteps and continue.