The Way

The question is this: Can we say, in just a few words, what it is that makes a good pilot? A quick review.

First, we know it isn’t luck. Luck—the random, the chaotic, the unpredictable—is always there, in aviation as in anything, but for good pilots randomness is just part of the fun, part of what makes it interesting. Good luck has nothing to do with what it takes to be a good pilot, and bad luck has nothing to do with being a not-so-good pilot. It’s not luck. (See “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”)

Second, what, more than anything else, distinguishes a good pilot from a not-so-good pilot? Simple: The good ones make it look easy; the not-so-good ones make it look hard. (See “The Test.”)

So the question boils down to this: How do the good ones make it look easy? And I think the key to answering that question lies not in how the good ones make it look easy, but in how the not-so-good ones make it look hard: It’s easy to make it look hard, just act real busy all the time without actually doing anything. But it’s very hard to make it look easy. And there’s the rub: The hard way is the easy way. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Mark Barnard was a very good friend of mine at ATA. I first met him when he taught my navigation class and later, when I upgraded to 727 Captain, he taught general operations, otherwise known as “Charm School.” (“Charm School” is where an experienced Captain tries to tell new Captains how to stay out of trouble.) He impressed me both times not just with his knowledge, but also with his wit and intelligence. He eventually went on to be the Chief Pilot for the L-1011, a position that suited him perfectly because he loved the 1011, was on a first name basis with most of the 1011 engineers at Lockheed, and was probably the most knowledgeable person outside of Lockheed on that airplane. He and I, along with another friend and Check Airman, John Stahl, were in Indianapolis working on a major revision to the L-1011 operations manual on September 11, 2001. I ended up doing a rescue mission when flying resumed, but in street clothes because I hadn’t taken a uniform. No one seemed to mind. We never finished the revision. So we have a little history.

Mark used to say that his father, an Indiana farmer with little education, was one of the smartest people he ever knew. He quoted his father a lot, and one of his better sayings was, “If you don’t have time to do it right, you sure don’t have time to do it wrong.” It was funny and smart at the same time, which made it easy to remember. It was also another way of saying, “The hard way is the easy way.”

This wasn’t a lesson that came to me naturally. I’m not very good with tools. I don’t know why. My father is, my brother Dean was, but I’m not. A lot has to do with my impatience and some has to do with laziness. (An FAA inspector once told me that the goal of all pilots was to have the most amount of fun with the least amount of effort. Not too far from the truth, actually.) I’m much more likely to reach in the kitchen drawer and grab a table knife to tighten the screw on the pot handle than I am to go to the basement where I keep my tools and get a screwdriver. And I’ll do this knowing that the best that can come out of it is that the pot handle will still have to be retightened a week later, and the worst that can come out of it is that I will ruin the knife, wreck the slot in the screw, and have to either throw the pot out or spend some money getting somebody who knows what he’s doing to fix it. The hard way to fix it, for me, is to take the time to go get the screwdriver—the right one, the one that fits, even if that means going back to the toolbox again—and do it right the first time, because that seems to take extra effort. But the hard way ends up being the easy way.

How does this apply to aviation, to being a good pilot? The answer is probably not the one anyone wants to hear, but here it is anyway: There is no easy way to be a good pilot. No one is born a pilot. It has to be learned, and no one learns anything without an effort, and no one retains the skills and knowledge without practice and review. Flight planning and preflights, weather briefings and weight and balance do not happen by themselves. There are no short cuts, no easy ways, “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear, Act I, Scene 1.) The good ones make it look easy because they have worked hard to be good pilots. They are never content to reach a certain minimally acceptable level and then quit. The good ones read, they think, they never have aviation too far from their minds. As a practical matter, they know that being a good pilot takes time—both time to learn and time to do it right.

This means they don’t just check the destination weather and forecast; they get a full briefing. This means they don’t just open the hangar doors, drag the airplane out and fly away; they do a complete preflight including powering up the panel and checking the flight instruments and aircraft systems. It means, if they are VFR-only pilots, that they don’t just stick a Garmin on the panel and launch, hoping for the best; they prepare a dead reckoning log with VOR cross checks to back up their GPS. If they are instrument-rated, they file IFR for every serious cross country—anytime the object is to get somewhere, as opposed to just flying around to have fun—because they know that is the sound and sensible way to do it and the best way to stay current and confidant in their instrument skills. They also prepare a flight log and keep a running tally of times and fuel enroute, and when the trend is negative they have a Plan B. It means they sometimes file to destinations that are further away from where they want to go, but that have good approach facilities and long runways. It also means that when they do try to fly to small airports with limited approaches and facilities, they don’t keep trying when the first attempt doesn’t work; they divert to their alternate, an alternate that does have good approaches, good facilities, and much better weather forecast. They land, and that’s that—no drama, no scares, no worries.

In means, in short, that good pilots do what they have been trained and taught to do, not what is easy to do. I can’t list everything a good pilot should do—that’s what flight training is for. I can only tell you that that is what you must do if you want to make it look easy. Good flying should be boring—the exciting part is having a flight go off smoothly and without a hitch, even if you’re the only one who knows how much work it took. The hard way is the easy way. All the rest is just, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.)

Edited by Nicole Clausing