As with my Doctor friend who relishes the intense and frenetic atmosphere of a busy A and E and thrives on the buzz of working under that pressure another Doctor would cave in and better suit a quiete country surgery where he can take time with his patients.
They are both Doctors!
The same with pilots some thrive under pressure running on adrenaline others dont.
Different horses for different courses
Many different professions put people into situations that create or participate in very tense events. Aviation is certainly no different.
Adrenaline junkies and thrill seekers gravitate to certain sports or activities and seem to love the feeling it gives them, though I submit that such individuals are poorly suited to the cockpit. I've met quite a few of them, especially at the entry levels in aviation, and have even weeded a number of them out over the years. From time to time one will hear of so-and-so who put an airplane into a cliff face or a tree top while seeking thrills or doing something stupid. It happens more often than people think.
There's an old saying that "there are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." I don't entirely agree with that, but it does make a good point. As pilots tend to gain more experience, and generally as pilots get older, pilots tend to eschew rash behavior and situations that unnecessarily create risk or danger.
Certainly we all face some need to be challenged. Whether it's a need to be doing something at times of boredom, or a need to move on to instrument training after doing the private in order to keep challenging ourselves, we all have some need to solve problems, test ourselves, expand. That's normal, and that's natural.
Where we see the real problem occur isn't dealing with natural tension in a given environment; we train for that part. It's why we do simulated engine failures and practice unusual attitudes. The real problem occurs when we enter into situations by giving in to pressure. Pressure to get there: getthereitis, as it's sometimes called. Pressure to perform ("look ma, no hands!" or "watch this!'). Pressure to go. Pressure to stretch fuel. Pressure in so many different ways, then we've entered a dangerous area.
I had an ambulance flight in a Learjet one night about ten years or so ago, in which we had a heart team on board to pick up a heart for a dying patient. Imagine the pressure: the patient who would receive the heart was waiting, and being prepped. The patient who had the heart was waiting and being prepped. If we hesitated, the heart would be wasted, and very likely the person expecting it would die. Conditions deteriorated at the destination. We knew it would have no hangar space, and the hear team could be a while; we had no deice capability at night at this rural location. As we pressed on, the temperature dropped and a thick fog formed. The only approach was an NDB procedure. Nearby choices weren't available. We knew that with changing conditions, we'd have significant frost on the airplane, on the critical learjet wing, when the heart team returned.
We notified the heart team that we were turning around, and we returned to our departure airport. I do not know what happened after that. We may have condemned the recipient to die, by preventing him or her from getting a heart. Conversely, we may have saved the heart for harvest the next morning, by ensuring that we weren't sitting on the ramp with the heart in an ice chest, unable to go anywhere; we may have saved a life. I don't care to know, and I don't care, because the pressure to make that decision based on external factors was something we excluded from the cockpit. We didn't base our decision on anything but safety of flight.
One night I was involved in an operation tracking someone on the ground. I had been involved in this operation all evening and into the night. I was involved in covertly tracking this target, and it was very important that we not lose them. A significant number of people, a lot of money, and a lot of work were involved in this particular operation. As some thunderstorms built in the area, I didn't want to jeopardize the flight by getting stuck in or under an embedded thunderstorm. At one point, I terminated the pursuit for safety of flight. Considerable pressure existed at the time, both from my own personnel and others on the ground and in the air, to stay with the target. I elected to make a decision based on safety of flight, without regard to external pressures. I felt internal pressure; pressure to perform, pressure to accomplish, and pressure that I knew would be levied if I failed to produce the desired results. I set it all aside. It had no part in my decision making. I elected to accept any consequences of my decision (because when one picks up one end of the stick, one picks up the other), and pressed on.
During a night rural ambulance flight in a King Air 200, I was called to a mountain location for a multi-casualty incident. An auto collision had left several people badly injured, who needed transportation to a large city. Other air ambulance operators were unavailable, and ground transportation wasn't an option. The airport lay in a very large tract of military airspace that was hot; it was being used for an aerial combat exercise. I coordinated with the range control on the way in, and as always they were very professional and helpful. As I waited on the ramp, I took on some fuel, and inspected the airplane.
I found a row of rivets inboard of the left engine, along the sparcap area, that were all smoking. A significant number of them. This had not been the case when we departed. I tended to do a very thorough inspection between flights, always, and I found the rivets in the dark using a flashlight. None were missing, but they were all definitely "working." Knowing that I had a medical crew waiting, multiple patients waiting, that we would be doing back to back flights to transport them for treatment, and that even the military was holding back traffic on a busy range to accomodate us, I made the call, and notified the medical crew that we were shut down. I waited until morning, and took the airplane to a repair center where the wing was inspected and all the rivets in that area replaced.
Absolutely there was pressure to perform, but it was irrelevant as my only concern was safety of flight. Conversely, there have been many times that I was one of the only ones flying under certain conditions, given that I felt comfortable and confident making the flight; those are times I said "yes" when others said no. In fact, when doing atmospheric work, often we'd look for the places that all other aircraft were avoiding (thunderstorms, etc), and go there because it was just what we were looking for. On other occasions, I took flights on nights when others didn't want to go, because it was safe, and they were being lazy. On yet other nights, even though I felt comfortable going and others didn't, I closed ranks, and refused the mission too. I didn't want my flight to pressure the other pilots or put them in the position of having someone say "he did it, why can't you?"
My yardstick for making such decisions has long been that the most conservative opinion wins. There may be several of us on board. Only one or two of us may be pilots. On an ambulance flight, for example, I may be the only pilot, but we may have several medics, a nurse, and so forth. I may be the best equipped to make safety of flight decisions, weather-related calls, etc. However, every one of us has a very personal stake in the outcome of the flight. If I screw up, we all pay the price, including the patient, or the mission personnel, or the cargo, or whatever may be on the block. Accordingly, we all have a say.
The most conservative opinion wins. If everyone on board feels comfortable going, but I do not, we're not going. If I feel very comfortable going but someone else does not, we're not going. It may require an explanation to them to help them understand why it's safe; if that's the case, then we may go. It may mean that they get off the flight and someone else gets on who is more comfortable with the situation we still go. However, I'm not going to allow anyone to exceed their personal limits or comfort range; if someone isn't getting a warm fuzzy feeling about the operation, then there's a problem and it needs to be investigated. It may be the only warning we get.
In my present "day job," we have numerous points built into checklists which require confirmation of each crew member, before we proceed. One item, for example, is "Takeoff Data" on the Before Takeoff Checklist. The response on this particular checklist is "Valid," and must be repeated out loud by each crewmember before we move on to another item. This is more than just a word; it's a verbal confirmation by each person stating that they have reviewed the takeoff speeds, weights, thrust settings, stopping distances, temperatures, and so forth, and that each person personally attests to the information being correct and valid. It means that we're confident, agree, and are willing to stake our lives on our statement of validity.
If at some point, anyone expressed doubt, then we're going to do something different.
Pressure comes from many different sources. For the professional aviator, the employer, the client, and a host of other sources can be the cause of pressure, just as it can come from within the cockpit. For one who doesn't fly for a living, the source can be a family member, a passenger, one's employer (got to be at work tomorrow, right?), people watching the takeoff, deteriorating weather, dwindling fuel, and lots and lots of other sources.
In every case, one can certainly consider the source and consider the information, but one can never allow the pressure to have any part in the decision making process.
I once arrived in a hangar at night to find mechanics removing a propeller governor. I asked them what was the matter, and they said that the pilot had reported that the governor was "jammed" and that it wouldn't work. I expressed surprise, as that doesn't happen to a propeller governor. They said see for yourself, it's there on the bench. Sure enough, the governor wouldn't move; the lever arm was fixed in place, and couldn't be moved using the cockpit control.
I asked when the pilot had discovered this, and how his feather checks and RPM checks had gone, before takeoff. As it turns out, he had discovered the problem before he got on the runway, but elected to take off and fly back in that condition, anyway. He had departed from a maintenance base where the problem could have been addressed. He didn't want to stay there; he had no clothing, it was temporary quarters that weren't his own, and he wanted to get back to XXXX. So, he departed.
I pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the governor; someone had allowed an improperly twisted bite of safety wire to snare the lever arm on the governor assembly. The assembly was fine, and worked properly once the safety wire was cut, removed, and properly reapplied. Entirely unnecessarily, this pilot had allowed meaningless self-imposed pressure to entice him to takeoff without any ability to feather the propeller or control it's RPM, over hostile terrain, in a very dangerous place, and fly along a routing that contained nearly all the local indigenous population (also dangerous), to our location. A failure of this engine would have meant with absolute certainty that he couldn't have sustained flight, without the ability to feather the propeller. He had no business taking off. He was fortunate that the flight was uneventful, but he jeopardized himself, one of our aircraft, and just as importantly, exposed the risk of allowing the equipment on board to become property of those who shouldn't have had access to it, if he went down. A very bad call, all based on foolish pressure.
When I was a newly minted private pilot, I made my first flight with a passenger at night, and elected to go to a location on the desert. With no horizon and few references, and mountains in the area (along with mountain waves, potentially disorienting turbulence, and one engine and one vacum pump and one generator, I blasted off, full of overconfidence, with my mother on board. I was seventeen years old at the time, I'd flown this route in the daytime, and felt sure that nothing could go wrong. I had a little bit of time under the hood doing flight by reference to instruments, and it was truly a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
Off I went. I noticed the ammeter flickering at some point during the flight, but didn't pay much attention. I'd seen it do that before, and I knew intuitively that even if the electrical system failed completely, the engine wouldn't quit, because I had two good magnetos. I had three light sources in my bag, lots of redundancy, and I pressed on.
At some point, as you've probably guessed, the alternator did give up the ghost. I should have turned back, but by the time it did, and by the time the battery began to go dead, we were out over the west desert, hopelessly in instrument conditions (VFR night over the mountains and desert in a remote place), and I had become the victim of my own stupidity. No problem, I thought. I turned on a flashlight ("torch"), but the batteries had died. I discarded it, and tried a maglight. the bulb failed. I installed a bulb out of the tailcap, but it was no good. I tried a third flashlight (all three worked before the flight, I was sure of it), and had no luck. Finally, out of lights, I grabbed a chemical light stick and broke it. The cockpit flooded with light, and I was blinded.
I realized that with this, I would be able to see the instruments, but had no electronic nav, and was feeling more lost as time went on. At lengt, I dropped the chemlight down my shirt to reduce the glare, then did a turn to see if I could spot a slightly lighter area in the sky against the mountaintops. I was able to do that, and followed the very faint light pollution back to civilization and the city, and went on to land at my home airport.
That event was a series of small blunders that could easily have become the proverbial links in the mishap chain. I exceeded my own comfort zone, I pressed on, I disregarded warning signs, I flew beyond my experience level, and I allowed my internal pressure to perform in front my mother to do all those things.
At some point in our flying careers, be they professional or private, we can look back and see the experience landscape dotted with events that are best viewed as "learning experiences." I can look back over the years and the hours and see places where I got lucky, and learned, or that I ignorantly passed through, and later in retrospect learned. Or mistakes I made, from which I learned. I try very hard today to not put myself into "learning situations," like that. Steve McGarrett, of Hawaii Five-O, once said "We don't make mistakes here, Danno. We just learn great lessons." While that may be true, and I like his moxy, I've made great mistakes over the years, and for the most part, been fortunate to learn the great lessons that were the result.
One of the most important ones I've learned (and I know you know this and that I'm "preaching to the choir"), is to work very hard to winnow the wheat from the chaff, and separate safety of flight from the pressure issues. I firmly believe that there's no flight which must be made. I've done ambulance, law enforcement, military, airline, cargo, charter, fractional, fire, and all kinds of other flying, each with it's own unique requirements and attendant pressures. In each case, one has got to be able to say "no," and one has got to know when to say "yes," and even when to say "we can't do that, but we can do this." Sometimes it's a fine line, but most of the time it's not; it's usually a well defined line that we make thinner when we allow ourselves to feel "pressure."