Faulty logic

For example, a couple decides to have a child because all their friends are. A driver sees the light turn yellow, so he accelerates. Or a woman buys a television that she doesn’t need simply because it’s on sale. I’d like to think that we pilots are a logical bunch, who don’t fall prey to the pitfalls of the average human decision-making processes. If our aviation minds are as faulty as those folks listed, then that’s pretty terrifying. For those of us who fly, the toughest decision across the board has to be the go/no-go deliberation. Let’s play a little decision-making game to see how we do.

Scenario one: Two corporate pilots are standing at the computer in the pilot briefing room of the FBO watching the radar image of a line of thunderstorms that’s supposed to hit their destination at the flight planned time of arrival. Ceilings are marginal, but visibility looks good, and there are a few holes in the line of weather. Both pilots are experienced, with several thousand hours apiece, and the jet is well-equipped with on-board radar. The passengers, including the CEO and CFO of the company, are waiting in the lobby for a meeting they’ve had planned for months. You’re the pilot. Do you walk out there and tell your boss you’re not willing to do the flight or do you go load their suitcases and welcome them aboard?

You’d always rather be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you could be on the ground.Scenario two: You just started flying a Cirrus SR22 for a man who pays you incredibly well and treats you like family. On a 20-mile final approach, the fuel imbalance sensor goes off. So, per the checklist, you turn the fuel pump on, select the fullest tank, then turn the boost pump back off. When you land and are exiting the runway, the engine quits. You realize your error immediately: The auxiliary fuel pump is supposed to remain on for landing, but you turned it off in the fuel imbalance sequence and forgot to turn it back on. But still, you wonder—isn’t that pump just intended to be a backup? Is there something wrong with the engine? You don’t have much experience with a Cirrus and wonder if it could be vapor lock. Your boss wants you to fly him to the Bahamas later in the week, and you haven’t seen the sun all winter long. Do you down the Cirrus and wait until you can get a reliable mechanic to look at that engine? Or do you fly it over to an airport 30 minutes away so someone can check it out? Or should you chalk the engine issues up to your own faulty technique and go buy a new swimsuit for the islands?

In both of these cases, the pilots took the flights. I was one of the pilots in the first scenario. A flight instructor friend was the pilot in the second. Although the trips were stressful, they ended safely. So, it seems the pilots made the right decisions after all. If you find yourself nodding along right now, watch out. You walked right into a common trap. That line of thinking gets pilots in trouble all the time: It worked fine last time, so I’ll do it again, except maybe push my comfort level a little bit further. Or how about that phenomenon where we hear about aircraft accidents as if they are happening on some other planet and could never truly happen to us? Functioning fuel gauge—who needs it? Gear warning horn—let’s pull that breaker so we don’t have to hear the annoying sound.

Or what about knowing the weather doesn’t look good, but taking off anyway with the thought that you can always turn back if things get really bad? I guess we aren’t such logical thinkers after all, often making decisions based on emotions and external pressures and risky ways of rationalizing our choices. Especially if you are making that go/no-go decision as a single pilot, without a crewmember to bounce the variables off of, that can feel like a really lonely place. If you have doubts, you could always phone a friend and ask someone with more experience to walk through the decision process with you. But also understand that everyone’s comfort levels are different, and if you find yourself polling people with what would you do type questions, you probably already know the right answer. You just don’t want to accept it.

As my pilot examiner told me the day I passed my private pilot checkride: “You’d always rather be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you could be on the ground.”

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