Flying Life: Top of your game

Michael Jordan famously wore his North Carolina practice shorts underneath his NBA uniform for every game. Superstitions and rituals are common in worlds where the outcome doesn’t feel entirely under human control. As silly as these practices seem, they help reduce anxiety and add a little fun to a situation that can tend to get too serious.

Maybe that’s why we have so many of them in aviation. A flight instructor I used to work with always wore his Schnauzer socks to checkrides to help him put his best foot forward. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) Another pilot friend must always have a stick of gum before she takes off, “for the changing atmospheric pressures,” she says, but I think we all know it’s more than that now. Military pilots for generations have painted nose art on their aircraft as a lucky charm before going into combat.

While we may not ever play like Williams or Jordan, I like to think of us pilots as athletes of sorts. Flying, like sports, demands a perfect harmony of mind and muscle. It makes sense, then, that pilots might have a few things to learn about our craft from our sports heroes. I’ll admit that superstitions may be somewhat illogical, but there are many rational things top athletes do to make sure they come out on top more often than their competitors.

Take care of your body. Tom Brady, NFL quarterback and six-time Super Bowl winner, has a meticulous health care regimen that includes 20 ounces of electrolyte water every morning followed by a smoothie and a workout, then a protein shake. No alcohol, gluten, dairy, caffeine, or artificial sweeteners. That sounds like the seventh circle of hell to me, but he’s an aging athlete still performing at peak, so he must be doing something right.

For pilots, physical health is extremely important, especially with regard to fatigue and oxygen depletion. That means seven to eight hours of rest, and avoiding cigarettes. We also need our brains to function at high levels, so the eight hours bottle to throttle rule may not be enough for a flight on New Year’s Day. Keeping a healthy weight with diet and exercise is important, too, but hopefully that’s common sense for anyone who has ever squeezed into the tiny cockpit of a Cessna 152.

Confidence wins ballgames. No talk of confident athletes would be complete without mentioning LeBron James’s 2018 Twitter post congratulating himself for reaching 30,000 career points before he actually scored the points. Say what you want about the man, but nobody dominates a sport by believing they are second best. Many would argue that because he sees himself succeeding, those dreams become reality.

The bottom line for us is that pilots who aren’t confident will not do well in stressful situations such as checkrides, poor weather, or an engine failure. When something goes wrong, they will expect to perform poorly and, therefore, end up fulfilling their own prophecy. On the other hand, I flew with a guy on the Beechjet who was more confident than anyone I’ve ever been with in the cockpit. His trick was to chair-fly the entire flight, from startup to shutdown, including the taxi, takeoff—and, I’m sure, his greased-on landing. Our minds are a powerful tool when used to our advantage, so if there’s a maneuver or procedure you’re not comfortable with, do some studying, then go up with an instructor to master it so the next time you’re faced with in-flight pressure, you will have the confidence to handle the situation safely.

Practice makes perfect. Or rather “perfect practice makes perfect” for all you Lombardi fans out there. Lindsey Vonn, four-time women’s World Cup championship skier, is in the gym year round, six days a week, twice a day, for three to six hours a day. And that doesn’t even count the work on the mountain. She does everything from biking for cardiovascular stamina and weight lifting for strength to physical therapy for injury avoidance.

In the airplane, we always need to challenge ourselves. This means that even if you are on a VFR flight in uncontrolled airspace, you can practice holding your altitude within 50 feet. Just because you’re in the “off season” and not on a checkride is no reason to get sloppy. Whenever I land an airplane now, I call out my point of intended landing, pushing myself to hit a specific spot every time. I worked too hard to develop those skills to see them degrade from disuse.

At the end of the day, flying an airplane or playing a sport is usually not a life-or-death matter. We have to remember that it’s good to take our flying seriously, as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously. So, if you want to wear your socks with the bowtie-wearing pug for all the important flights, more power to you.

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