How do you fix airmanship?

[Slick Goodlin]

You need a mentor and reflect what they do in your own actions. Therefore osmosis only partially work.

That’s why GA is so frustrating some days. Seems pilots either have it or they don’t, but the haves weren’t born with it so there’s gotta be a way to at least put it on someone’s mind.

The most obvious problem is that if you got ten pilots together to determine what constitutes "good airmanship" you would find ten different definitions.

I’d have thought good airmanship in general boiled down to good situational awareness of what’s happening outside the plane. Maybe I’m alone in this definition, I hadn’t considered that.

the Colonel's Guideline 1.00 for aviation: try not to piss people off.

I usually say it’s about being good neighbours but yeah, basically that.

Airmanship to me means, you could have done the right thing but you didn’t, either because you lacked situational awareness or you’re an evil bastard that just doesn’t give a shit.

Is that all airmanship to you or just the bad kind? The opposite might be that you could have done the right thing brainlessly like a robot but you recognized what to tweak a little and why.

I realized that the crowd I was hanging with weren't interested in anything they weren't getting paid to fly.

Those people are so boring. Usually I find that they’re not really interested in anything. How do you even go through life like that?

[digits]

The most obvious problem is that if you got ten pilots together to determine what constitutes "good airmanship" you would find ten different definitions.

I’d have thought good airmanship in general boiled down to good situational awareness of what’s happening outside the plane. Maybe I’m alone in this definition, I hadn’t considered that.

You'd think but the more people that are around you, the higher the chances someone will complain about your 'airmanship'. Let's consider an example at an uncontrolled airport without a designated runup spot.

You want to do a run up in your light single for a maintenance check. Great. Empty airport, nobody around, no wind. You look for a clean spot on the apron, somewhere in a corner, you do your thing, and all is well.

Next day, you need to do another run up for a maintenance check. Now there's lots of planes around, people are in their hangars working, lots of traffic. What do you do?
- You can't do it in your parking spot, because there's loose gravel. Your AME would say it's bad airmanship to damage your prop.
- You move across the apron, but the pilot parked next to you considers this bad airmanship, because he's going to start boarding his passengers soon and that would be unsafe.
- You move out of the way of all parked planes, and find a spot in front of a hangar with a closed door. The hangar owner would consider this bad airmanship, because he wants to open up his hangar to get his plane out.
- You move out of the way of all hangars and parked planes, and decide to move to the empty fuel station. Nobody's around, remote area. But the landing airplane's pilot considers this bad airmanship, because he wants fuel.
- You decide to taxi to the runway and do the run up on the runway. You don't see any traffic, nobody's waiting behind you to take off. Your old instructor is sitting in the bar across the road, looking at the plane just needlesly sitting on the runway for a bloody runup. "Such bad airmanship, who taught that guy how to fly", he thinks.

You'll see that the common theme here is that you'll be accused of using poor judgement or airmanship if you inconvenience anyone. Your safest bet is to never touch an airplane again. Then you'll be safe

[Colonel]

You still going through your first divorce? That’s a tough one. They get easier after that.

[Slick Goodlin]

You still going through your first divorce? That’s a tough one. They get easier after that.

Yep, and things are pretty civil so far. Probably going to put off my second for a while.

[Colonel]

Heh. That’s what they all say!

Have fun,