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elvis
OCD lies on a spectrum. Where one falls on that spectrum is the issue wrt whether it becomes manageable or debilitating. Safe aviating is built on SOP, routine, structure, diligence, thoroughness, preparedness to list but a few. OCD tendencies obviously could be beneficial during operations, however severe OCD I believe would be problematic. As you mentioned in an earlier post, managing the compulsions is the key in aviation as in daily living. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be helpful/successful for a true diagnosis. Good luck. |
ORIGIN OF THE CHECKLIST
In October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for aircraft manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn’t supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation’s gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing’s plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far. A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the “flying fortress.” The name stuck. The flight “competition,” according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft. A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and-three-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill (thus Hill AFB , Ogden, UT ). An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to “pilot error,” the report said. Substantially more complex than previous aircraft, the new plane required the pilot to attend to the four engines, a retractable landing gear, new wing flaps, electric trim tabs that needed adjustment to maintain control at different airspeeds, and constant-speed propellers whose pitch had to be regulated with hydraulic controls, among other features. While doing all this, Hill had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. The Boeing model was deemed, as a newspaper put it, “too much aircraft for one man to fly.” The Army Air Corps declared Douglas’s smaller design the winner. Boeing nearly went bankrupt. Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes, and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was flyable. So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do. They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps’ Chief of Flight Testing. Instead, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. Its mere existence indicated how far aeronautics had advanced. In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air might have been nerve-racking, but it was hardly complex. Using a checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a pilot than to a driver backing a car out of the garage... But this new plane was too complicated to be left to the memory of any pilot, however expert. With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 18 million miles without one accident. The Army ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand. They dubbed it the B-17. (From the Royal Victorian Aero Club's newsletter PLANE TALK Dec 2012) |
Parts of this thread are starting to look like that "other" web site. Had enough of the sound of hob nail boots, goose stepping beneath the Arch d Triumph there, let's not do it here.
WD |
Test Yourself!
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CDO is the worst form of OCD where everything must be in alphabetical order :)
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That's just the old smell test. If you try to do a taste test on the flight plan it leaves goober all over it and is off-putting for the rest of the crew.
I have flown with a couple of real obsessive guys in my career. One would have circled his seat three times before sitting down had there been sufficient room. Getting him ready to push-back on schedule was the quite an effort. He didn't last, sad to say: he eventually got too paralysed with ritual to keep his job. |
I'll cautiously weigh in.
Based on my observations of fellow students back in the day, and those that I have instructed over the years, I would say that the risks of obsessive behaviour (not a great word but I can't seem to find better just now) are very real. I know of several who were unsuccessful as pilots for the simple reason that they could NOT let things go. Yes, planning and checklists and routine are vital parts of preparing for and completing a flight safely. It is just as important to be able to prioritize. The aircraft will NOT stop while you recheck your plan 5 times, or do the checklist a few more times just to be sure. As experience is gained and the flying gets more challenging it will become necessary to, at times, live with ambiguity. I hear the cries already! I didn't say accept ambiguity, just deal with it. Inevitably the aircraft will find a way to malfunction that isn't written down, or no matter how many times you ask the agency your talking to they just can't get you the weather. As pilot you must be able to keep functioning whether you are getting the things you want or not. It is a fluid environment up there, and we must be able to adapt as well as plan. "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower |
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