By Rod Douglas 

To fly or not to fly, that is the question. Our high flying aviator, Rod Douglas, navigates cross-country and assesses whether his safety or his demanding schedule is more important. Safety first in a world without margins.

It’s beautiful. The morning I mean. 9,000 feet, 173 knots, the engine is purring. Pacobel’s Cannon playing in the headsets. The big twin Avidyne screens of the Cirrus SR22 give me a full and absolute understanding of my circumstance, position and all systems. It takes but a glance up for the scan from my laptop to confirm everything is good.

Yet I’m feeling pressured.

I was due to have the aircraft back last night. I made a weather and stress assessment call last night not to go. I parked myself in a hotel in Melbourne for an early night and an early departure. Good decision? Yes. But then the text messages started. The initial response from the FBO was no problem, when will you be back?  I suggested a safe time of 11.00 am. No matter what, I could achieve that, so why pretend, to myself or anybody else, anything different?

Then I get the message. “I contacted Fred (name changed to protect the innocent) who has EDP from 0800. He is not too happy. He has to be in Hamilton Island by then and has thousands of dollars of accommodation booked. He said he needed the aircraft as booked. Cheers.”

My initial response was one of feeling guilty. I regard myself as a highly responsible individual. I don’t like letting anybody down. Like most people I don’t choose conflict although I’m perfectly happy to take it on if I need to. So I start scenario planning. Is it possible? I got the message at 10 pm Melbourne time. I haven’t got my ERSA with me but my memory suggests that refuellers work 6 am to 10 pm. The caps are locked so I can’t call them and talk them into refuelling and taking the carnet over the phone.  I conclude that it can’t be done.

So, satisfied that I could do nothing about it I sent the following response. “Will do my best. Nothing I can do about the weather and I’m sure you don’t want risks taken. I will depart as soon as the refuellers start YMEN. Best I can do.”

Safety is all about decisions. Pressure is anything that influences you and affects your decision making. Pressure therefore comes from within and without. Stress is simply an individual’s response to it.

Those who fly themselves for business have a sobering fact to consider. Safety statistics tell us that single pilot operations by business people have significantly higher risk associated than either professional crew operated business aviation, charter or recreational aviation. Granted my reference is US data, but I can’t see any reason why the Australian experience would be any different. I certainly base my decision making on the assumption that I am at higher risk whenever pressure of meetings, revenue generation or getting home is involved.

So here I am flying home, pressure from the next aircraft user, my own pressure to get back and hang out with my wife and five kids after a week away, crook weather and I feel exhausted. There’s a simple reality here. Safety comes first.

And it’s been one of those days. It always amazes me that pressure attracts Murphy. Murphy needs no introduction. His law is legendary. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking aviation, business, family or finances: pressure is Murphy’s best friend.

I was up at 5.00 am, in the car to the airport at 5.30. Breakfast, the most important meal of the day came from McDonalds – yuk. Essendon security is, well, frustrating. They used to have this really cool fingerprint reader that you logged into with your license number when you arrived. It worked really well. But not well enough for our terrorist regulators.  No, apparently the large terrorist population of Melbourne can forge fingerprints. That simple and sophisticated system was replaced with a magnetic card which you have to apply for in person at the airport management office. Naturally that is only open in business hours and I suspect that they aren’t particularly keen to give them out to every itinerant pilot that flies in.

It gets better. Now to get in after hours you ring security. They aren’t on the field but rather in some control room somewhere. They ask for your aircraft registration and your ASIC number. They give you a code to a gate. All good right. Except that the main gate next to the terminal doesn’t have a code lock on it. The guy in the offsite security office doesn’t know where the gate with the code lock is. I wonder if the anti terrorist team who didn’t like the sophisticated biometric security of the finger print scanner have figured out that it’s probably easier to look over the fence, read a rego number, make up a six digit license number, add dash one or two and think up a name than to forge a fingerprint. But hey, if no one knows where the code locked gate is no one can get it. The system is now foolproof.

I mean give me a break. Osama Bin Laden’s greatest victory would seem to have been the destruction of common sense within the western world. So with a code, no gate and no one around, it’s time to apply a little creative thinking. I remembered that way over on the other side of the field live the Royal Flying Doctors and that they are probably a 24 hour operation. It’s only a half kilometre walk with all my bags. Fortunately before I get there, and adjacent to the other end of the terminal, I discover yet another flaw in the joke that is airport security. A perfect climbing gate. So I climbed. The walk to the aircraft was enough to satisfy my exercise quota. I wonder which law I just broke and how much the fine will be?

Bags packed away it’s time for fuel. Murphy is lurking, however, and the refueller tells me I’ve got a 20 minute delay while he swaps trucks and completes his start of day safety checks. Here I am hoping to be taxiing by 6.30 and it’s 7.00 before engine start.

Next, it’s a little radio problem. Intermittent transmission. It’s working most of the time. I’ve got plenty of options, so run ups complete I’m lined up on runway 26 and waiting for an arrival into Melbourne when the mobile phone rings. One glance down tells me it’s Mark my driver. I intuitively know what’s wrong. My wallet has fallen out in the car. I abort the takeoff, make a fast taxi down to taxiway papa and back to the gate. ATC helpfully hold my clearance open. Mark is waiting at the gate and I repeat the whole thing again. Another 15 minutes lost.

New clearance. Visual departure runway 08. I’m calling ready. No response. Swap radios. No response. Check the connections on the headset. No response. Check the transmit indicator on the radios. No transmit. Fiddle with the push to talk switch. Transmit live. By now I’m feeling the pressure. I know that there is a cranky next user of the aircraft who wants to depart for Hamilton Island at 8.00 am.

It’s decision time.

My view has always been that a pilot’s first and critical role is to make good decisions based on all the factors available with an absolute commitment to safety first. Last night that’s what I did when I stayed overnight.

Shall I stop on a Saturday morning and see if I can find an avionics technician to have a look? My clear answer was no. I knew exactly what the problem was. I have a serviceable PTT on the co-pilots' yoke and a spare push to talk in my bag. Clear for takeoff I departed. I got 11 minutes out of the PTT before it failed. So, now I’m flying using the co-pilot’s PTT. A quick text to the FBO lets them know both of the failure and my estimate YBAF.

The past two decades has seen Australia become more and more economically rational. There is little margin for error planned into anything as a result. In days gone by, margins were such that people could afford to put some fat into planning. Another aircraft sitting on the ramp to cover for one that’s delayed wasn’t a problem. A booking could be knocked back just to be safe. Today, everybody simply has to take every opportunity to make their assets work, or they go out of business.

In the past five years I’ve averaged  150 hours per annum  and this is only the second time I had been delayed returning an aircraft through a choice to stay overnight on a return flight. On another four or five occasions I have stopped an outbound flight short due to weather and continued it in the morning. Statistically it’s meaningless and therefore it wouldn’t be economically rational to do anything but take the booking and hope.

But it insipidly adds pressure just the same.

It’s also fair to say the greatest pressure is before the decision is made. Once made you have to live with it and you get on with it. Two hours forty five into the flight and I’m a happy chappy. VFR. An article almost finished, the purr of the big continental not missing a beat, the music continues and I’m over worrying about the guy on the other end who, by now, knows where I am and has a different problem. Will he fly with a failed PTT?

So let’s consider the sort of challenges that led to me choosing not to battle the weather, my tiredness and a general sense of unease.

I’ve had a big week. Monday was a day filled with board and operational meetings. First for the year for a retail company I chair. It had a multi-million dollar fire that destroyed their 6,000 sq m warehouse in September. The team has pulled together remarkably, the insurance company has been fantastic, our suppliers have supported us and, rather than threatening the very life of the company, we have emerged four months later stronger than ever. A new store opened, a major systems upgrade in the middle and the biggest half year profit ever, with an expectation for January to see our biggest sales by a country mile. Things are looking good. A good, but very intense day.

Out to the airport. Echo Delta Papa is standing ready to go. The boys at Sunland had provided their usual good service. Tanks topped. Oil and tie down kit in the back. I was quickly in the air, but it was still 6.30 pm and the leg to Swan Hill was going to be a minimum of four hours.

Brisbane was in the tail of the weather system that caused the January floods. There were significant build ups to the west and south west. The overcast was around 3,000. I was confident that with the excellent equipment in the Cirrus that I could work my way through and that the weather was relatively benign a couple of hundred miles down my track to Swan Hill.

Still, I think any pilot taking off into an IFR environment single engine or twin, parachute or no parachute, feels some pressure. My usual pre-departure call to my wife, Michelle, added to it. “You promised me you wouldn’t fly when there are storms around,” she said.  “No,” replied I. “I told you that I won’t fly if there are thunderstorms around.”

I was clear. I was going up for a look. I had re-planned via the Gold Coast to ensure that I stayed clear of the build ups with the intention of tracking coastal as far as I felt comfortable. The minute I didn’t, I’d be landing and finding a bed for an early night and a 5 am departure to get me where I had to be, confident that the cool of night would significantly calm the weather.

So the incipid stress was quietly building. Once clear of Brisbane tracking south I requested a tops report. A Rex flight 50 miles south suggested 12 -14,000 feet. Their flight conditions were good and smooth at FL150. On track Cooly, I requested an amended one zero thousand. That got me just on top of the overcast with another layer a couple of thousand feet above me.

Decision time. The only thing showing on the Stormscope were the cells in the build up behind me and to the west. I was in smooth air with no real sign of convective activity.  The air traffic controllers were pretty relaxed, with only average workload, and seemed to be happy to help me out with pireps. Do I track coastal or head inland? I also know from experience that if there is going to be storm activity heading south it will be on the border or it will be Coffs Harbour south to Williamstown. Inland, if there is an issue, it’s usually around the ranges behind Brisbane.

I decided to take the inland route.

I’m always ribbed by people who fly with me about the amount of ‘crap’ I take when I fly. Of course the crap is just stuff I might need. A hand held radio. A full set of paper charts, both VFR and IFR. A pencil case full of spare batteries, cables, a push to talk switch, pens, protractors, a calculator, carnets, leatherman, three torches, DAP’s, AIP, plotter, a spare headset and oxygen. The list goes on. I always have a minimum of two litres of water per head and three if I’m solo. When the weather is at all questionable I carry portable oxygen. Experience tells me that most Australian weather tops out between 10 and 12,000 feet and most of the aircraft I fly have the performance to climb above it. Once up there, you can see the cells and avoid them. All of this ‘what if stuff’ costs me 20 kg’s of payload.

And mostly I never use any of it, particularly with the redundancy in a glass cockpit.

On Monday I needed the oxygen. As I headed west it was clear that I was going to need to climb up. Cleared to FL120 I popped out again. By now I was ready to cross the front edge of the range. It’s predicable that the worst of the weather will be on either edge of the range. I had no Stormscope activity in front of me, just dark clouds. I looked for the lightest patch, got a right of track clearance and plunged in.

It’s at this point that a glass cockpit makes a real difference. In VFR conditions I don’t care what I’m flying (as long as it’s well maintained). When you first enter into the clouds and you have no real sense how long you’ll be in them, a glass cockpit is like having a second pilot to help you think.

The computers driving the panels simply do not suffer stress. They do it the same way whether they are in the soup or not. For me entering the soup is about ensuring that my clear thinking and decision making continues. I used to think that I was the only one who had to do fear management when I entered clouds. I probably judged myself for it. Then I started a straw poll with pilots around the place. I was amazed. 100% agreed that they had a routine that accompanied the transition into the clouds. For a lot it was to sit up straighter, switch to a higher awareness of systems monitoring or tighten their harness.  Everyone suggested that they ‘switched circuits’ from passively monitoring to actively exploring, and that this was what they trained and retrained for inside the instrument rating.

 The weather started to thicken and, because I could, I requested a climb to FL140. Why fly in the clouds if you can avoid it? That popped me out again. Ahead I saw what I hoped would be the last line of weather before a clear run over the plains. As I plunged into it, the turbulence began and I knew it was time to just ride it out. Seven minutes exactly. Once I emerged, the sloping back of the front told me that any significant concerns from weather were over.

The stress from weather abated and the next question was range. I’d flown considerably more track miles than planned and climbed considerably higher. Would I make it? All southern flights have headwinds and they are unpredictable. I was flying lean of peak for best economy already. Once again the glass gives you an instance assessment of range, fuel at each point along the flight plan and winds are calculated exactly and instantaneously. My assessment was that it was touch and go for a landing with IFR reserves intact.

Now a different type of pressure kicks in. There are lots of places to stop for fuel, although I reckon that the fuel companies are dramatically underdone with swipe bowsers for out of hours refueling. Now the time pressure starts to emerge. A refuelling stop will cost at least 30 minutes.  I will be landing Swan Hill at 11.30 pm local time. My first meeting is 7.30 am. By the time I get to hotel and the adrenaline of flying settles, I won’t be asleep before 12.30. The rest of the day is back to back. That’s just what my life is like. I accept it, but it means I have to actively manage my wellness. After all, we live in an economically rational world.

I decided to plan via Dubbo rather than direct. The fuel computer had me landing Swan Hill with 50 minutes of fuel. A quick call to update the weather had Swan Hill CAVOK but with a front crossing my track with reports of CU activity about 100 miles to run. If that didn’t seal it, a building pressure in my bladder did. Dubbo appeared quickly and with a different kind of pressure now calling me I landed, taxied to the bowser and relieved myself in more ways than one with full tanks and a new relaxed attitude.

I was back in the air quickly and was given a firm but friendly reminder about cancelling my SARtime. Being on an IFR plan I’d called in the circuit, landed and promptly rushed off to the call of nature without giving it another thought. The insipid power of pressure. Little things that matter slip through.

The rest of the flight went off without a hitch. Back up in the lower flight levels I was able to pick my way between the CU build ups with the help of a bright moon and I was soon on the ground in Swan Hill awaiting the taxi.

The next couple of days were productive if a little intense. Wednesday saw me flying down to Essendon. Doesn’t matter how good or bad a day is, an hour in an airplane with no weather around will always improve it. I landed with a dinner meeting to go to and, while I considered refuelling, I decided that the urgent could take precedent over the organised.

The next couple of days flew by. A client crisis had me totally on the hop. Crisis’ focus the mind and force you to become extremely creative, but also bring with them a dramatic dose of emotion and stress for all those involved. Even if I’m not feeling it, having others around you in that space will impact and, if you’re not careful, can spread like a virus.

So here I am back at that decision point. To go or not to go.

Pilots often have an image to uphold. A little bit Superman like. Pull on your seven league boots and be where mere mortals can’t be because of skill piloting a machine across the country. Add the testosterone of a youthful male and it’s easy to see how the barnstorming archetype can be oh so attractive.

For me it’s safety first now.  Age, responsibility and hopefully a little wisdom will do that to you. But I do remember it wasn’t always like that for me. Twenty years ago, when I was living in the States and building hours hanging around Palomar, I was up for just about anything. Like having to get a Piper Archer to Chicago from San Diego within 24 hours when another pilot failed to deliver as promised. I hate to admit it today, but to do that I flew 16 hours in 24 and was proud to have delivered. I was rewarded for it as well. I was seen as a young,’ do what it takes’ Aussie. That exercise in going above and beyond the call of duty got me my first right seat flight in a corporate jet.

Or the time I jumped in a Caravan with a LAME and local flying legend and flew up into the Sacramento Valley to a field to bring back a doctor’s Bonanza. He’d forgotten to refuel it after a stopover on a flight back from Seattle and had, not surprisingly, run out of fuel.  He was at 10,000 ft, and, as I discovered as I climbed out, was probably within gliding distance of no less than four airports. But no, he panicked and had landed in the field with the wheels retracted.

We had a set of jacks and a new prop with us. We landed beside the Bonanza, jacked it up, cycled the gear down and test ran the engine. The prop had stopped horizontal before touchdown and amazingly was undamaged. We filled the tanks from drums and, after a couple of taxi runs, I flew it back to Palomar with the wheels down. I reckon I would have had at best 400 hours. Mike, local legend, had 10,000. He said it should be ok, so I just did it. He did give me the good advice to spiral up to altitude over the field so if it did stop I could get back in! It’s fair to say that today I would say no to both of those flights, even though they were both flights that taught me an enormous amount and are vivid in my memory.

Flying is a wonderful pastime, whether it’s recreational, for business or for work. And it has the potential to be dangerous when things go wrong. The challenge is to decide whether you want to be Superman or super safe. These days I choose super safe. I fly every week, not every day as I did in the States.  It seems to me that the more you fly, all things being equal, the more likely you are to make quality decisions. There is, of course, the opposing perspective. Familiarity breeds contempt.

However you choose to do it, I hope that we will both be in the ranks of the vast majority of pilots who live their life to the fullest and survive the moments when we forget that we aren’t super heroes, just talented well trained individuals with a focus on super safety.

So, while I’m terribly sorry that I shortened Fred and his family’s holiday in Hamilton Island by half a day, in my mind safety always comes first.