Eliminate External Pressure

Source: www.pilotworkshop.com, Featuring Doug Stewart

Mark:

“What do we need to consider as far as external pressures, Doug?"

Doug:

"Well, I think so often it’s the external pressures that really start to forge the first link of every accident chain. So there are a lot of things we have to look at there.

I think it becomes a no brainer in realizing that external pressures sometimes will push us to do a flight and have that Go mentality, when it really should be No go; the Get home-itis; the Get there-itis.

It’s always something pushing us and it could be internal pressures as well as external pressures.

If it’s external, it certainly could be business that requires it – you have to make a flight to make a business meeting. Those kind of pressures. I could give you many examples, but we understand what that is.

What we have to do in creating our personal minimums is be sure that as we plan our flights, we allow for these delays. We allow for the potential that the flight might not be able to be made.

If you don’t allow that buffer within your planning, it could push you into making the flight when you really shouldn’t. So you really need to be sure to include allowance for delays.

This also means that we let the people that we’re going to meet, or perhaps the people that are coming with us on the flight - they need to know that there is the possibility that the flight might not be completed. The flight might not end up where you were originally planned.

We need to let our passengers know that because if you don’t, then there’s that pressure. It’s like that professional pilot. We’ve got to complete the mission. We’ve got to get there."