Originally Posted by BelArgUSA
When you line up on that runway, repeat after me - trims, flaps, spoilers (snip) The rest is up to you.
Mate, that is a ripper. I have followed some of your earlier posts and thought, incipient old fart --- but I take that back. Well said.
For me, you have summed up what Tony Kern took several thousand words to say in his Flight Discipline texts.
We have a responsibility. Every day, hundreds of people put their safety in our hands. We can choose not to fly, but once we push those throttles forward ...... It is up to us.
"Repeat after me - trims, flaps, spoilers. The rest is up to you"
With your permission, I shall use that line in the future. Gen Y need to hear it.
Originally Posted by Jolly Girl
Fire away.
Bravo, JG. You passed the most important test in real CRM. Strong advocate for your position, yet invited criticism. Seriously,
bravo
I cant help but think if you and BelArgUSA should find yourself working the same flight deck/same layover, that you would find yourselves in 'violent agreement' with each other. I detect the same seriousness of purpose in both your posts.
To take you to task on one matter...
.... many years ago, in another discipline, I was privileged to be invited to hear one of the worlds leading businessmen discuss what he believed to be the essential element in being a true entrepreneur. Not an asset stripper, but an entrepreneur. He believed that the essential element was in building small teams, each member bringing a high level of specialist knowledge, and imagination, to the team.
As he described the ideal profile of such a teammember, he remarked that university education was useful, but that one should be careful of selecting anyone that had any degree or award higher than an MBA. In particular, PhD's should be
avoided!
The conference convenor, himself a PhD in applied psych, could not hold back -- 'but that excludes so much expertise and thinking, why not a PhD?'
The answer -- PhD are great contributors to society, but most have worked within rules too long, and
no longer think from first principles.
That really resonated with me. At the time, because I was not nearly disciplined enough to complete a university degree of any kind, and I had not considered that perhaps being 'educated' also equated to being captured by a style of thinking, to some extent.
What is my point?
As pilots, we work with elemental forces, everyday. If we delve too far into intellectual constructs, and move away from first principles of the world around us and the people we work with, we invite trouble.
For many pilots, CRM training and instruction is fertile ground on which to make a contribution and to exercise some intellectual capacity outside the daily grind of line flying.
It is important to acquire and develop NOTECH skills. However, one should not lose sight of their place as being alongside systems knowledge, procedural knowledge, meteorology, principles of flight, etc. Another tool to be kept sharp and ready for use in the professional pilot 'toolkit.' Not a new religion or doctrine by which all aspects of our profession is ruled and measured.
A tool, an essential component of flight discipline and a professional skill to be honed, along with others. Not valued above, or less than, other skills. Equal in importance.
