Flying Confidence Level Over Time

[Andy95W]

1 hour ago, 201er said:

Does that imply that confidence is the antithesis to safety? 
 

Confidence doesn’t look all to helpful in that comparison.

Lack of experience = over confidence = higher accident rate

Less confidence = greater caution = lower accident rate

[Yooper Rocketman]

22 hours ago, cliffy said:

Confidence increases with skill level. Keeping active in flying and training helps. Don't be complacent about anything in flying

Don't accept sloppy flying. Work hard to make the perfect flight (it will never happen). VFR or IFR it doesn't matter

Work at being professional in every aspect of aviation. 
 

Bear in mind that if you are UNDER CONTROL when you touch down (no matter on or off field) you will in all likelihood survive. It happens every day. 

This will be my first post in a long time.  I will be shortly rejoining the ranks of Mooney Owners for a few years.  Reasons to be discussed at a later date.  
 

I felt EXACTLY like @201er and took that feeling seriously.  Your self assessment and realistic attitude spells “professional pilot” in my book!!

I have done 8-10 hours of recurrent training ANNUALLY, for the last five years, and can testify having been handed the UGLIEST possible flying scenario recently, a serious attitude, acceptance of the risks and dedicated QUALITY training could save your life someday.  
 

And @cliffy, your last paragraph in your quoted text above EXACTLY describes the difference between a crash and an EMERGENCY LANDING.   The damage to the plane is NOT the deciding factor.  Flying it to the ground (and walking away) determines the difference!!

Stay safe everyone.  
 

Tom

[Nippernaper]

11 hours ago, Yooper Rocketman said:

This will be my first post in a long time.  I will be shortly rejoining the ranks of Mooney Owners for a few years.  Reasons to be discussed at a later date.  
 

I felt EXACTLY like @201er and took that feeling seriously.  Your self assessment and realistic attitude spells “professional pilot” in my book!!

I have done 8-10 hours of recurrent training ANNUALLY, for the last five years, and can testify having been handed the UGLIEST possible flying scenario recently, a serious attitude, acceptance of the risks and dedicated QUALITY training could save your life someday.  
 

And @cliffy, your last paragraph in your quoted text above EXACTLY describes the difference between a crash and an EMERGENCY LANDING.   The damage to the plane is NOT the deciding factor.  Flying it to the ground (and walking away) determines the difference!!

Stay safe everyone.  
 

Tom

When I saw the accident listed below on Kathryn's report, I was hoping it wasn't you.  Please do let us know how you are when appropriate.

Nippernaper

Kathryn's Report: Lancair IV-P, N994PT: Accident occurred December 25, 2021 at Ford Airport (KIMT), Iron Mountain, Michigan (kathrynsreport.com)

[thinwing]

7 hours ago, Nippernaper said:

When I saw the accident listed below on Kathryn's report, I was hoping it wasn't you.  Please do let us know how you are when appropriate.

Nippernaper

Kathryn's Report: Lancair IV-P, N994PT: Accident occurred December 25, 2021 at Ford Airport (KIMT), Iron Mountain, Michigan (kathrynsreport.com)

I cannot imagine a more stressful deadstick landing than in Lancair iv!!!Maybe you used a whole lotta luck out of your luck bucket for not an equal amount in your experience bucket....what Im tying to say Tom is  t hat sometimes flying the bird all the way to the crash site as Hoover always preached and apparently you did...is not enough.....glad to hear injuries are minor!Kathryn report indicates a pretty much totaled airframe if description of damage is accurate.I would be interested to hear what caused the flameout...engine was a walter m601??

[Yooper Rocketman]

Thanks everyone but let’s not railroad @201er ‘s thread.  
 

I will open a new one soon.  I should have used more discretion in my reply. 
 

Tom

[Hank]

Like Mike's graph, my confidence takes a hit after I have a problem or scare myself. But if I keep flying, fix what's wrong and discuss my mistakes and how to avoid repeating them, my confidence recovers. If I take a hiatus from flying, as this winter while waiting for my knee to recover enough to push the Mooney back into the hangar, my confidence takes a hit, but some flying and reviewing brings it back.

Everything you do carries risk, even staying at home all day every day. Not only are there a significant number of slip / trip / fall injuries at home, but there are health risks that increase with a sedentary lifestyle. Each of us determines our individual risk tolerance, even when we don't know all the risks associated with each potential path lying before us . . . . But I'll still go down that path at 145 knots true!

[Rick Junkin]

I've done a lot of high risk flying. When I say high risk I mean things like flutter testing at mach 2. Or with unfriendly people shooting at me. I'd like to offer perhaps a different perspective on the question of confidence. Please bear with me.

Some of this has already been said, but I'll repeat it for context. We've all lived through a period where we we were too ignorant of the risks we were facing to be afraid, and we managed to survive. Then as we gained experience and learned from our poor decisions we became less ignorant of risk, but were still willing to accept a fairly high level and relied on our overconfidence in our perceived skill as mitigation. Throw in youthful enthusiasm and a lack of recognition of not knowing what we didn't know, and we gave ourselves opportunity to have more experiences we learned from that allowed us to develop judgement. Poor judgement at first maybe, but improving as we learned from our own experiences and improving even more when we discovered how to learn from other people's experiences. And the more we learned, the more we started to understand how much we didn't know, and things started to change in the way we thought. And in how we assessed our capabilities and the risks we were presented with. We became more mindful about consequences and risk mitigations. We developed good judgement. Now, whether we decided to employ that good judgement, or not, is unique to each individual. But I believe good judgement is the keystone to confidence.

Assessing our own capabilities and the risks we are facing, using our best judgement, leads us to good decisions to which we are confident we can execute. As our knowledge increases and our self-awareness improves our judgement will tell us what we can and can not do. Over time our judgement may tell us we are not willing to accept the same risks we accepted earlier in life. Or even yesterday.  I don't see this as a loss of confidence, I see it as growth in good judgement. The FAA calls good judgement good Aeronautical Decision Making. There are lots of good tools to help us make sure we don't overlook anything.

Now, you could say, "I've lost confidence in my ability to...", and I think this is where Mike is coming from, but those kind of statements beg the question - why? What's the root cause of the loss of confidence? A simple root cause analysis technique is the 5 Why Analysis. I'm sure many are familiar. In this case the first question is, "Why have you lost confidence?" Once we have an answer, we ask again, to that answer, why? Repeat 5 times and we have a high potential of determining how to regain our confidence. Or, we may determine that the cause can't be remedied. Either way, we have a path forward.

Thanks for staying with me this far. Tying it all together, and bringing it back specifically to flying, add proficiency to the equation. Proficiency and good judgement provide a basis for confidence in our ability to complete today's flight, or confidence in our decision to cancel. Proficiency is just that, being proficient in everything we'll need to do, or may need to do, on our next flight. Don't confuse that with currency. My good friend Jack Waters will be talking about this very subject at the Mooney Summit in September.

So my personal answer to the original question? Nope. I haven't lost confidence. I'm more confident every day in my ability to exercise good judgement and assess what I need to do to be ready for my next flight, including a short field landing or an approach down to minimums or both if required. And I'm confident I won't go if I'm not ready.

Cheers,
Rick

[DCarlton]

Perhaps one more thought.  As I've gotten older, this feeling creeps into other aspects of my life too.  I no longer want to travel to countries that have a higher security risk, or plan a vacation with sketchy logistics, unless the reward is very high (you're going to experience something you just can't see and experience any other way).  It's a risk vs reward trade off.  Early in your flying, the reward is huge.  Over time, the reward may diminish but the risk is similar.  I had a mechanic tell me.... once you stop enjoying it, stop flying (seems obvious but it's hard to give up).  At this point in life, I tell myself I'm the most experienced I've ever been, I try to do what it takes to stay proficient, and look for new ways to enjoy the rewards of flying.  So far, that's kept the scales tipped towards the positive.  

[Immelman]

On 3/21/2022 at 12:54 PM, Andy95W said:

I came on here to post with this idea but Andy hit it out of the park. Its no "accident" why the FAA wants 1200 hours to be PIC in 135 IFR ops... or 1500 hours for the normal ATP.

That 500 hour confidence is where you tend to royally F-up.

Even for higher-time pilots, I think its also true with time-in-type: That feeling that you've had a few hundred hours in the new machine and have it dialed.... use that as a queue to watch out!

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Immelman

[201er]

@Parker_Woodruff, so how does insurance see it? Does insurance see confidence as a negative feature for pilots? What about 5, 10 or 20 years experience? How do they see a 30 year old with 10 years experience vs a 60 year old with 10 years experience and equal hours?

[Parker_Woodruff]

16 hours ago, 201er said:

@Parker_Woodruff, so how does insurance see it? Does insurance see confidence as a negative feature for pilots? What about 5, 10 or 20 years experience? How do they see a 30 year old with 10 years experience vs a 60 year old with 10 years experience and equal hours?

They don't look at it that deep