Pirate & Shrike have got it.
You are going to be so much not-so-clean laundry hung out to dry as soon as anything goes wrong. They will wash their hands of you.
I've been operating in many dodgy places as have lots of you. What I do now, and what makes my life a lot easier, is....I read it in the book, and what it says there I do.
If you try and juggle things here, bodge things there, 'make a plan' here and push things a bit there, where does it end? It ends up with you stressing yourself to death, if not killing yourself in the machine.
I operate according to the SOP's. If it's below minima I divert. If its overweight I offload. If it's broken I snag it. If it's a no-go item I don't go. Its as simple as that.
If the Ops manager has a problem with it he can take it up with the CAA or the CCMA. He will lose, sure as shooting.
Safety is paramount. This means I will not stick pig-headedly to my guns to ground the aircraft if the emergency floor lighting isn't working and that means the crew has to spend the night on the apron in Baghdad or the excitable African operator is threatening to jail us all. It doesn't mean I am rigidly blinkered, it means if I do ever depart from the rules I will easily be able to justify it to the reasonable man.
It's also about precedents. Don't set a precedent as a guy who will stretch things. In my company there are still one or two absolute cowboys. They now do any cowboy work required. Its their ass, licence, family's income on the line. Me? I do things the right way and they know that. They don't even ask questions any more and you know what? Most of my colleagues have adopted this attitude and our company is a better place for it. The result is a better quality operation and the clients can see that.
Make no mistake, I have been made to fly against the law at gunpoint twice, and in my earlier days have had to get into strips in horrible conditions with no navaids and nearly no fuel, but I learned every time, thought about what I would do to avoid that the next time and now that hasn't happened for a long time. Things might go wrong in the future, too, you can't rule that out; but I will learn from them if I am able.
Stress free is to work to the rules which were developed by studying other people's deaths.
Don't re-walk their fatal paths.
Last edited by AfricanSkies; 27th Jan 2006 at 18:40.