Steve76 wrote:
One would think that after all those years you would acquire a little immunity. I guess that isn't so....
This statement bothered me all weekend. It raises some questions I just have to ask.
Steve, my dear fellow, if you thought that pilots were granted such immunity, did you think that this would also apply to you? And if so, at what point would this "immunity" begin to take effect?
I ask this question because it's probably a common belief (or wishful thinking!) among pilots that the older and very experienced among us (myself, etc) are somehow immune from making the same little dumb mistakes that often catch low-timers (Old Man Rotor, Thomas coupling, et al). You know, the "little dumb mistakes" that prove fatal.
It absolutely matters not one bit how much experience or flight time you have. It's almost irrelevant. What's important is your
next takeoff, your
next flight and your
next landing. Sure, having a lot of hours means that you've probably seen a lot of mistakes and made a goodly number of them yourself. But I've yet to meet a pilot who was literally incapable of making a mistake more than once. Even me.
Especially me.
Contrary to what some of you might think (because I have not posted my CV on this forum), I have a lot of experience. A ton of experience. Multiple decades "at the wheel" and logbooks chock-a-block full of flight time. Big deal. I do not delude myself; I know that it offers me not one bit of "protection" or immunity against killing myself. Not one bit! Why? Because I've seen some of my peers...
highly experienced "graybeards" do some incredibly dumb things. Alright, they might not have resulted in fatal accidents...
this time, but the mistakes easily could have if the circumstances had been slightly different.
I admit that even I continue to make small errors on each flight. Very rare is the flight that goes absolutely perfectly. Obviously, the key is to catch the errors before the dominoes start tumbling. But what if some day I don't? The very thought makes me shudder.
However, it's very hard to treat every flight as if it's your first as a commercial pilot when the logbook has 10,000+ hours and upwards of 70,000 landings. You get to thinking, "Yeah, yeah, I've done this a thousand times already...at least!" And that's the danger. It takes real work to avoid becoming complacent.
So I do not like to hear pilots say that they think lots of experience grants some sort of immunity from getting killed in an aircraft accident. I don't even like to hear pilots say that they'd "like to think" it. Steve76, it is unfortunate that Mr. Freeman died the way he did. But he had no more "immunity" than the lowest-time Robbie pilot (Crab?) on the planet has. Neither have I. And neither have you.