Gotcha. I thought perhaps it was an EU reference with which I'm not familiar.
Regarding taking the time to get ready in an airplane, many moons ago I learned something from my boss, in Kansas. We were a small operation, operating several nearly identical Cessna AgTrucks. We referred to them as "the orange one," "the yellow one," and "the blue one." Otherwise, they were the same, inside and out.
Lain, the owners son, usually flew the blue airplane. One day he took my airplane, the orange one. This particular day, as his father and I looked on (we always kept one pilot on the ground as a lookout during takeoffs and landings, in the event of an emergency), Lain took longer than usual before departing. I asked his father why he thought it was taking so long.
"He's getting to know that airplane." Clarence said. I questioned this; after all, Lain had thousands of hours in AgTrucks, particularly in each of these airplanes.
"Ah." said Clarence. "Lain usually flies the blue one. Today he's in the orange one. They all have a different personality, they all fly a little different."
At my stage in life and career, they all flew about the same, to me. But not to Lain. We used most of the performance envelope of the airplanes during a typical spray flight, usually close to the ground, and taking the airplane right to the buffet in the turns at each end of the field, often at 75' of less, was very common. Accordingly, one needed to be absolutely sure where the airplane would pay off, and exactly what it would, and wouldn't do. Even with thousands of hours in the airplanes, even that airplane, Lain was taking the extra time to get thoroughly familiar and ready for the flight, from doing a quick blindfold check to feeling out the controls.
I didn't fully appreciate the wisdom of what Clarence told me at the time. Today, I do.
A few years ago, I flew a brand new Air Tractor AT-802. It flew like a dream. After a couple of weeks in that airplane, I was sent to fill-in on a very used and abused airplane, which had suffered a hard life. It flew very differently. Not unsafe, but it was like flying an entirely different kind of aircraft. I couldn't get comfortable in it. There were a few cockpit differences, and I spent the better part of two days sitting in the cockpit waiting for a dispatch, going over and over the cockpit with my eyes shut until I was blindfold-ready. I spent hours going over the radios, the nav, the drop system, the controls, the cockpit canopy release, the emergency handle, and so forth. I spent extra time outside the airplane, inspecting it, looking it over, examining, tugging, pulling, tweaking. I inspected every nut and bolt I could find, and every rivet I could see.
The former airplane was easy; get in and go, and I did. The latter airplane required much more attention. I was slower to get in the air, took wider turns on the drop, was more cautious about shoe-horning it into a tight space, and left myself wider outs, and flew it more conservatively.
The time it takes to get ready for a flight, or to conduct a flight (or to handle an emergency in flight) really depends on the airman, the aircraft, the operation, and many other factors that make it an individual experience. I tend to take more time than others. Perhaps I'm thorough, or perhaps just slow. My solution is to start early. Take the time I need. I always keep in mind that there is no flight which must be made. I've flown numerous types of operations, some very pressing. The old saying, "what's the rush, where's the fire?" never applied; I was often going to a fire, but always recognized that I didn't create the emergency, and wasn't about to let the flight become one. If more time was needed to preflight, load, takeoff, divert around terrain, skirt weather, run checklists, handle and onboard situation, communicate, etc, I took it, without any sense of pressure or guilt. No flight must be made; take the time necessary to do what must be done (or don't go).
Certainly moments will arise when the plan must change. Particularly since the recent UPS 6 crash in Dubai, we've been fairly keen on our fire drills when doing training. Take off, get a fire warning, go on oxygen and establish communiations, and do the memory items. Then get immediate vectors back to land; no briefing, no long identification or set up; get back as quickly as possible while addressing the problem as best able. In our scenarios, it's pressing, always resulting in an evacuation after landing (in the sim). That's one of those occasions when one isn't overly concerned about much of the standardized procedure we'd normally do. However, even in those cases, we're executing the emergency evacuation checklist prior to leaving the cockpit (forgetting to shut down engines, for example could have very serious consequences when leaving the airplane in front of those big engines).
The best counsel I think I ever got in an airplane was this: in an emergency, sit on one's hands for a ten count, then do something. Take the time to think. Fast hands kill. I think that really applies to nearly every aspect of our flight, from the preflight planning to the preflight inspection, to the runup, takeoff procedures, all the way through to the shutdown and parking checklists.
Several years ago I was working a very active fire in a turbine Dromader. I ended up doing 18 flights to the fire that day. After each landing, one of the things we would do is lock the controls, as soon as we unlocked the tailwheel. This involved using a steel spring-loaded bar in the cockpit to physically lock the stick assembly. This was to prevent damage of the large control surfaces from wind or other aircraft, during ground maneuvering. Obviously this required removal of the control lock and a control check before every takeoff. Doing a control sweep was common, ingrained practice. I always had the checklists on a kneeboard, and used them religiously. All good and well, until one's been sweating like a pig under a hot greenhouse canopy all day, and is hungry, sore, tired, and there's no end in sight.
I got on the runway somewhere around load 12, locked the tailwheel, and pushed up the power. Normal procedure involved putting the stick forward as soon as the tail was ready to fly, sometimes using some flap to do it. As you've probably guessed, the stick wouldn't budge. I bumped the control lock free with my fist, and it snapped out of the way under spring tension. I continued the takeoff, silently whipping myself senseless with a mental cat-of-nine tails, and vowed to redouble my commitment to that checklist. Habits, flows, practices, and memorized procedures are great until they break down at a critical time during a hot, very uncomfortable workday, and things begin to get missed.
A little later in the day, I watched Bill, one of our other pilots, reject a takeoff. I queried him on the radio and he said "something didn't look right." I knew exactly what had happened: he got 3/4 of the way into his takeoff roll, tail in the air, before realizing that his controls were locked out. It could have been too late, if he'd waited any longer.
Not long after that I was in another state, at an airport primarily used by fire and ag airplanes. Someone who worked on the ramp there commented that the year previously, he'd seen a Dromader take off with the control lock engaged. He said the airplane made it a few hundred feet into the air before nosing over and diving into the ground, where it exploded. There before the grace go I, I thought; could have been me, could have been Bill. I'm fanatical about checklist usage, about flows, procedure, cockpit knowledge, and taking the time to check...yet I did it, too. What if I hadn't found it sooner? Was getting one more load to the fire quickly more important than taking extra time to check? Was I getting complacent, tired, hurried, or too comfortable to take the time necessary to save my life? Apparently so, and it could have been a colossal error. Thankfully, it was not.
I submit that single pilot or in a crew, if it's humanly possible to take the time, we should. The life we save might be our own.
A favorite question we always asked of jump students was how long they would have to open their reserve parachute if the main should fail. Nobody ever got the right answer, and it was very simple; the same answer applies in an airplane during an emergency. How long have we got to make it work out. The rest of our life.
Even if it's measured in minutes or seconds...