'The Perfect Pilot' Requires An Honest Appraisal

Although we can dream, there is no such animal as a perfect pilot. It’s a myth, much like strong tailwinds roundtrip!

Consider this, though: if you STRIVE for perfection and fall short, you land in a very good, safe place making you a more competent, safe, and efficient aviator.

Years ago, the Northwest Airlines training department promoted this Perfect Pilot concept to its pilot group. They strongly encouraged us to develop a mindset that sought perfection rather than adequacy. Think of a flight as a perfect square hunk of granite. If you forget to hold the controls for the wind on taxi, you would chip away a little piece of granite. Forgot to check NOTAMs? Didn’t visually check long final while on base? No weather briefing? More chunks falling to the floor. Got 200 feet off altitude? Used the wrong frequency for CTAF? Didn’t visually clear the area before turns? Skidded your turn to final? More chipping.

Ask yourself … does my granite block look more like a bunch of monkeys went to town on it with power tools or a nice, polished square stone?

Here’s a challenge for you. After your next flight, do an honest appraisal of your “chisel” items. What little things did you do to chisel away at your “perfect” flight. When we do this, we raise our own bar to a higher level, no matter how experienced a pilot we are. Taking time to consciously assess our flights in detail helps us to avoid making the same mistake again.

As fighter formation commanders used to say in WWII, “Keep it in tight.” If you’re OK with 150-foot variances in your altitude, consider “tightening up” and strive for a 75-foot maximum.

More experienced pilots may tighten up to correct for a needle width or two on altitudes, headings, and airspeeds.

The important lesson here is safety. You might fly “needles centered” all the time but could use some improvement in the “soft” items. When evaluating your own performance, include areas like getting proper weather briefings, maintaining safe altitudes, utilizing excellent judgement, avoiding shortcuts, avoiding expectation bias, using reasonable personal weather minimums, avoiding get-there-itis, etc.

Half of being a safe pilot is technical competence and the other half is using sound judgment in your aeronautical decision making.

Being adequate is so average. Go forth and seek perfection and climb a rung or two on the aeronautical competence ladder. And what do we have to help us when those inevitable errors that might jeopardize our certificates happen? File a NASA Air Safety Reporting System report. Happy flying!