How to be less nervous before a flight?

[KT1988]

@Aviator172s At least when you need a safety pilot you are nervous. I was sometimes safety pilot for people who were totally not nervous but could possibly at least damage the aircraft or do some epic fail. Never was I so stressed as when being the safety pilot (but its perfect training with becoming FI in mind) since you do really never know when to intervene especially on the landing approach and the flare (since you do not sit in the other persons mind). Once upon a time a guy landed the aircraft like in the middle of the runway I said full stop its too little place left for touch and go. But the guy put full throttle and then it looked like it would be too little runway left to stop so I prayed to the aircraft engine while looking at the oncoming forest so we fly above it during takeoff.... happily it worked.

Still the guy needing safety pilot laughed and had fun kind of not realizing that we kind of barely made it (ok maybe not barely but still nothing fun) above the forest and if it was not in the evening and warmer etc. itd..... and when I explained then he said "well everyone has to die" to which I said "thats true but I would prefer not doing it today".

Eitherway the point is that a little stress and respect for the height help keeping people alive. Since you do proper preflight check, you do proper procedures and use the checklist, you do the run up test etc. itd. and often you read all the incidents and accidents reports to know what not to do. Its kind of shocking sometimes to read someone did for example manage to takeoff with the control wheel lock in place..... or someone flew off into mist and icing conditions while doing VFR. Stuff like that does not happen if someone is a tiny bit stressed, its when someone go for a flight like going for a trip with the car.

PS. The medical I class is to exclude people with a high chance of getting suddenly ill. Imagine being a captain on a flight with 100s of passengers (on a stormy day possibility of windshear with a circle to land approach) and falling ill with a fresh FO thinking "the captain is here just in case" or what about single pilot crew on some business aircraft like PC-12NG. OR imagine being that FO (since everything can happen) first thing will be to not let the stress go beyond the border that will lower the performance as we know from human performance and limitations.