No Competition in the Sky

It is as Gann titled a book: Fate is the Hunter. You should not worry about the friend to beat, or the government minimum standard to meet; this is a long game of solitaire. You must not stop if you have beaten the other student or have passed a test. The real exam will come when you are alone.

FAA Administrator (and 14,000 hour pilot) Randy Babitt has said that scoring, "999 out of 1000 isn't good enough—people expect more." He is saying that you can't rest or relax by getting flying mostly right. Aviation is a different kind of test. A thirty year airline career can be ruined in five minutes, and at the crash site how minutes ahead of schedule you were, or how you scored on a written test ten years ago, doesn't matter any more. Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with the saying, "The way of the sage is to act but not to compete." Sam showed me that we should blend with the energy and flow of the universe to make the perfect flight, not butt heads and compete in false contests of ego.

There may be few flying competitions—especially outside the military, aerobatic and intercollegiate crowds—yet pilots create tremendous internal competitive pressures. To solo in ten hours, to complete the flight without turning back, to land on the runway without going around. We try to turn flying into a huge competition. Unfortunately many make the completion standards way too low. People pass the flight test, then relax and get complacent. Many of us end up competing with the elements, or the operating manual numbers, or a friend flying the same day—instead of working with them. None of these are the real test.

The only real test will come alone. Maybe in the dark. Certainly unexpectedly. You might fail the test before you even know you are sitting an exam. In controlled flight into terrain accidents (known as CFIT) pilots fly a perfectly good airplane into the ground, and don't even know what hit them. You miss something, you make a mistake, you don't crosscheck, and suddenly you crash into the ground. When you are flying at night or IFR you must know where you are, and where the high terrain is, at all times. Without a doubt. Eighty percent is not close to a passing grade and you will not get to take this test again if you fail. The Chair of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, knows this from constant immersion in accident investigations. She told a 2009 safety conference that, "you never know on which flight your career will be judged."

Larry Salganek is a MiG-15 air show pilot, jet warbird instructor and FAA examiner. In thinking about the crashes he was familiar with in high-performance jets he said, "most of the accidents happened because of ego. Someone was usually showing off or doing something they shouldn't have been doing." His cure is straightforward—"I don't fool around."

I was talking with an NTSB investigator about human nature a few years ago, when he mentioned that the most dangerous thing he knew of to a new pilot was a video camera. The pilot feels the almost irresistible need to show-off, to look not just competent, but great. Consider the F-14 navy fighter going vertical (straight up then straight down) while the (proud then horrified) parents filmed their son the new aviator needlessly crash and die. Or the C-150 buzzing the girlfriends house then stalling and crashing. Showing off in front of airshow crowds has wasted a perfectly good Airbus A-320 airliner and a B-52 bomber, along with all the lives within.

So yes, a video camera can kill you. A group of Italian skiers were enjoying a nice day in the mountains until a United States Marine Corps A-6 Intruder jet flew too low down the valley snapping the lift cables and killing 20 innocent people—while all the time the marines in the cockpit were videotaping themselves looking cool. Sam had heard through old friends in the corps that the aircraft commander was a great stick and rudder pilot, maybe the best in the squadron, but it takes more than that to be a complete pilot. You have to resist the pilot ego. Make your way to be the quiet controlled pilot who does not show off by exceeding safe limits. When others (your boss, your passengers, air traffic control) or yourself (your schedule, your pride, your ego) push you to go faster—you go slower. Sam told me that I never wanted to win the race to be first to the crashsite. Be calm. Whenever you feel rushed, you must slow down.

We know this truth unconsciously. The panicked pilot is frantic, rushing out of control. The commanding captain of the ship has the deep slow voice. He or she has time for everything of importance. The experienced have mastered the routine tasks, giving them the time to look at the big picture. During one flight with Sam when I was rushing to do everything he reached over and smacked me on the shoulder. "Relax; or you will die all tensed up," he said, "you can do more by going slower."

U.S. airline captains, in addition to simulator checks and recurrent ground training, have to have a 'line check' at least once a year. A check airman sits in the cockpit and observes a normal flight. Very few people fail line checks, but the possibility is there, and everyone wants to look good to the examiners. It's a follow-every-rule-exactly-by-the-book kind of an event. A couple of years ago, at the end of a four-day flight sequence, I had a line check flying from Chicago O'Hare to Madison, Wisconsin. (I think smart check airmen choose short flights that get them home in time for dinner.)

Thanks to a sharp first officer and good weather the line check went well. As a courtesy I offered the Puerto Rican check airman the left seat for the flight back to O'Hare, but he preferred to sleep in the passenger cabin. We taxied out on time only to hear from ATC that O'Hare had a ground hold due to traffic, and that no estimated takeoff time was available. Arghh. We pulled to a stop on the only convenient taxiway, and shut down an engine to save gas. We talked to the flight attendant. We talked to the passengers. We talked to dispatch. We waited.

Parked with a tailwind, ATR aircraft have an occasional bad habit of giving an amber caution alert 'NAC OVHT,'  meaning that the engine nacelle is starting to overheat. You change the airflow over the nacelle (by say bringing the 13-foot propeller out of feather or changing the flap setting) and the caution normally goes out in 20 seconds or so. We knew we might get this alert sitting with a tailwind. No big deal. We sat together in the warm Wisconsin sun, the three normal occupants of an airline flight deck—captain, first officer, and boredom.

The calm of the cockpit was broken by an aural alert. I put yesterday's newspaper down to deal with the NAC OVHT caution. But if it's a nacelle overheat why is the red engine fire handle lit up? Strange, that sounds like the fire bell. Engine fire? Engine fire! I slowly struggled through the syrup of clichéd confusion.

Simulator training and mental review reasserted themselves. The first officer was fully aware. We called out the 'Engine Fire - Ground' checklist from memory like a couple of drill sergeants. It started weird because the checklist expects you to be taxing, but we were stopped with one engine shut down and one prop feathered. However we worked the problem. Soon I was firing the explosive squibs that release halon gas into the engine to starve a fire of oxygen. My crew was evacuating the passengers. I was talking on the radio to brave gentlemen in bright yellow trucks wearing silver spacesuits. I fired the second shot of halon gas. The (as it turned out very small) fire finally went out.

Entering the quiet empty cabin, a captain alone on a crippled ship, I saw the rows of seats were not quite empty. The check airman was still sitting in the back row. Grinning. "You passed the line check. But you never know when the real checkride gonna happen."

He was right of course. And this was not my real test, but it was a wake up call. Sam told me there is a Malay proverb that says just because the river is quiet does not mean the crocodiles have left. None of us know when the real test will come. I doubt it will happen when an examiner—or a wow-she's-hot-I-need-to-impress-this-future-girlfriend—is in the cockpit watching me. It will come alone. On a dark stormy night. Or when I am fat, dumb and happy heading right into a mountainside. It will happen while I blissfully eat my chicken salad and think about next months big vacation with my lovely wife. It will happen while I worry about something else and take care of 20 other things, none of which would have killed me. I don't know when the real test will come. I just know I must be ready. Crocodiles have lots of teeth.

Commander Randy "Duke" Cunningham was one of the most highly decorated Navy pilots in the Vietnam War. The first U.S. fighter ace of the war, he received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, fifteen Air Medals and a Purple Heart. After Vietnam he was a Top Gun instructor. Interestingly, before he ever was a fighter pilot Duke was a school teacher and athletic coach. This ace with a master's degree in education knew that real battles were won early: "the winner [in aerial combat] may have been determined by the amount of time, energy, thought and training an individual has previously accomplished in an effort to increase his ability as a fighter pilot."

Rather than just trusting the word of a pilot, however legendary, in the early 1990's the USAF Chief of Staff directed air force research laboratories to investigate the human attributes that enable a pilot to develop and maintain what was seen as a tactical measure of airmanship, what we call Situational Awareness (SA). Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base published an exhaustive study of 171 active-duty F-15 A/C pilots (at the time the premier air superiority fighter) based in several front line squadrons, with pilot ages ranging from 24 to 45 years (Carrerra, Perry & Ree, 1996). They compared results of psychological and physical test batteries with supervisor and peer ratings of SA. This was a huge undertaking, carefully conducted with a rigorous scientific research methodology.

The study found no predictive power when looking at psychomotor or personality measures of pilots. Statistical analysis showed the fighter pilots with higher general cognitive ability based on items like working memory and spatial reasoning did tend to have slightly better rankings of SA. But what accounted for an amazing 92.5 of the variability in situational awareness rankings was something pretty simple. It was flying experience measured in number of F-15 hours. The study concluded the best way for F-15 pilots to acquire more of the seemingly magical SA was to have them spend more time flying in the F-15!

These results were not a surprise. Different researchers working for the USAF found a few years earlier that pilot age and flying experience in fighters were the best predictors of air combat maneuvering (ACM) performance (Waag & Raspotnik, 1993). I'm too old and fat to fly an F-15, but I can use the results to become a better pilot in whatever aircraft I want to fly well. I do this by flying it more! Sure it sounds obvious. But now we know nothing else the USAF research laboratory can think of has been proven to be better. If I really want to get better, I must fly more.

The real warriors are sometimes so ahead of the rest of us, that their real competition is with world records or ghosts or even perfection. Winning the game others are playing is not enough for these masters. They have moved on and up.

On 22 July, 2000, at the legendary birthplace of golf in St. Andrews, Scotland, Tiger Woods finished the final hole on what is simply known as the Old Course. He was in complete command of his game; one day left and six shots ahead of the next closest player. A margin with which he had never lost a tournament. The big Rolex clock hanging from the clubhouse said 6:57pm. Almost every other golfer in the world would head to the hotel. Not Tiger. No, Tiger wanted to go hit practice shots. But he didn't head to the driving range, as he well knew the Royal and Ancient driving range closes at seven. How did Tiger know this seemingly trivial information? He had wanted to go practice after playing at the same time last year, and was told then that it closed at seven.

Another great golfer was Ben Hogan. He would sometimes hit 1,000 balls in practice periods that would last over five hours. Jimmy Demaret remembers Hogan scoring a record 64 in the opening round of the Rochester Open. Demaret and most of the other competitors retired to the clubhouse to discuss the day's events over drinks. Hogan, who had hit an amazing ten birdies that day, went to the practice tee and hit wood shots. Asked what he was thinking, Ben said, "if a man can shoot ten birdies, there's no reason he can't shoot eighteen" (Demaret, 1954).

Golf is not as simple as practice makes perfect. The fact of the matter is that practice makes permanent. If you’re practicing the wrong procedures or mindsets, then you'd be better off doing nothing. The way to progress is to practice the right things. Learn the right procedures and techniques, know what is good and what to aim for, and then go practice. Perfect practice like this is a trait of all great warriors. Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan both obliterated many long-standing golf records. Winning is very important to them both, but I get the impression that they practice to learn about the game, themselves and to beat that distant hole in the ground. They do not practice just to get another big shiny prize that says they were a little ahead of the rest. They practice to learn and to overlearn, to stretch and reach out and go further.

When learning a skill we pass through three separate stages. The cognitive stage is when we are still fumbling with the instructions, figuring out just how to do the task. The associative stage is when the skill gets much better with increasing practice. Eventually we reach the autonomous stage where the skill becomes automatic, we feel it is fully learned, and improvements slow down. Scientists that have studied the acquisition of skills have measured performance through these stages and talk about the well known Power Law of Practice. The shape of a graph of the speed of the skill (or some other measure of quality) against amount of practice almost always fits a mathematical curve known as a power curve (math fans can plot it on a log scale and the resultant line is straight). The graph below is actual reaction times in milliseconds for a simple task practiced 250 times (reproduced from Newell & Rosenbloom, 1981). It clearly shows how performance quickly improves, but then plateaus out after extensive practice.

This power law has been observed in tasks as simple as rolling a cigar, to as complex as fault diagnosis in electronic circuits. It has been observed in motor learning tasks, perceptual motor tasks, and many other skilled undertakings. (All examples cited in Speelman & Maybery, 1998.)

What the real experts know is that while it can feel like a plateau, and while it takes more and more practice to get smaller and smaller improvements, the tail-end of the power law of practice is where the very good get very very good. Getting used to playing at this end of the curve is one of the differences between amateurs and professionals. You must take enjoyment in the smallest improvements in one little thing. The road to excellence starts with long strides anyone can see, but ends with hundreds of tiny little steps only the connoisseur can comprehend.

A swimmer you may have not read about is Jason Wening. He was born with multiple birth defects, and doctors amputated his deformed feet in childhood leaving him with two stumps just below the knee. One of his hands has only three fingers. Jason is a great swimmer, he is holder of six world records in disabled swimming. Asked why he pushes himself every day, Jason says, "for the simple pleasure of forcing the body and mind I was given to the absolute edge of my capabilities. I'm fascinated by trying to go ever faster. And when I do, I get for just a moment a vision of the limitless potential of the human race."

You may have read about the mountain climber who was the first blind person to scale Mt. Everest. Eric Weihenmayer has also climbed Mt. McKinley, Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Aconcagua. He also enjoys acrobatic skydiving, skiing and running marathons. In a 2001 Sports Illustrated interview he said, "I want to summit, and I like the pioneering aspect of being first. For me, though, the process is more fun, the moments of bliss that connect you with who you are. The summit is just a symbol that on that day you bought an uncontrollable situation under control." Eric shows me that you don't have to have eyesight to have vision.

Perfect was a tough word to use around Sam. His little band of student pilots were secretly trying for perfection, dreaming sometimes of that wonderful flight when—just one time, just for one simple flight—we did everything perfect. What a reward that would be, what a validation. Sam laughed at us when he caught us talking like that. "Don't expect to be a great pilot, just enjoy the piloting. Do it because you love it. You are entitled to enjoy all the work, but not the dream rewards." Other times he would be mad or sad, saying we'd be better off trying fly to the end of a rainbow seeking pots of gold than to chase perfection. Aim for excellence he'd say. Enjoy a few fast perfect moments, maybe. "A minute of aerial perfection is worth all the effort. A moment is the most you can ever expect from perfection." This is what makes high-performance flying so rewarding. It's no comparison, and no competition with, some simpler game that allows a 'perfect' score. Aim for excellence. Enjoy the outer journey and the art of the inner game.

Returning to Chinese Taoist philosophers, Chuang Tzu also knew something about checkrides long before the airplane was invented: "When archers shoot for enjoyment, they have all their skill; when they shoot for a brass buckle, they get nervous; when they shoot for a prize of gold, they begin to see two targets." Don't make flying a competition with anything other than fate or a contest with anybody but yourself.  Rather than worry about beating someone else, work on being unbeatable.

Before I lost contact with Sam, he told me that after a couple of years of getting used to not competing against others, of not showing off because I had passed some exam that had a minimum grade of 80%, it was time to move up to the next level of non competition: to stop competing with yourself.  Eventually you need to do what it is you are doing completely without comparisons or ranks. Just do it. Disregard yourself at the same time you are disregarding the competition. This purposeless detachment can bring the act closer to perfection. No regard to the competition, no regard to the ego, no regard to the self, no regard to life or death. Fear and desire drop away. There is just regard for the flight itself.

I do not compete for trophies.

— Wilbur Wright

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; the hardest victory is over self.

—Aristotle

The most important contest: between the pilot and the art of flying itself.

— Frank Herbert

Your opponent, in the end, is never really the player on the other side of the net, or the swimmer in the next lane, or the team on the other side of the field, or even the bar you must high-jump. Your opponent is yourself, your negative internal voices, your level of determination.

— Grace Lichtenstein

It goes without saying that as soon as one cherishes the thought of winning the contest or displaying one's skill in technique, swordsmanship is doomed.

— Takano Shigeyoshi

When I go our on the ice, I just think about my skating. I forget it is a competition.

— Katarina Witt

Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.

— Aesop

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

— Henry Longfellow

You shouldn't care what others think of you. You should only compare yourself with yourself.

— Jet Li

Always do more than is required of you.

— George S. Patton

I don't require my engineers to have diplomas. When I was going to school before the war, the principal told me I had failed because even though I was Number 1 in the class, I hadn't taken the final. I told him, 'I don't give a damn for the diploma. What I want is the knowledge.'

— Soichiro Honda

What I got from tennis was a search for excellence, improvement, to be as good as I could be as a tennis player. I love to compete and I want to win, but mostly I want to run and have fun and see how good I can be.

— Martina Navratilova

It was a challenge. I was having the greatest time, making mistakes, crashing. I didn't love racing to beat the other guys. I loved it because it allowed me to do that exploring.

— Bode Miller

Bush Flying, like all forms of flying, is a matter of details. And no detail is too small not to be important. There is an old saying that a flight is not over until the airplane is parked and properly tied down. Nowhere is this more true than in the bush, where help is unavailable. This is the reason the pro takes such care of seemingly minor details, and, in these details, survives.

— F. E. Potts

I wasn't worried about a perfect game going into the ninth. It was like a dream. I never thought about it the whole game. If I'd thought about it I wouldn't have thrown a perfect game.

— Jim 'Catfish' Hunter

The art of the sword consists of never being concerned with victory or defeat, with strength or weakness, of not moving one step forward, nor one step backward, or the enemy not seeing me and my not seeing the enemy. Penetrating to that which is fundamental before the separation of heaven and earth where even yin and yang cannot reach, one instantly attains proficiency in the art.

— Takuan Soho

Showing off is the fool's idea of glory.

— Bruce Lee

Shipwrecks will not wait; the sea is a pressing creditor. An hour's delay may be irreparable.

— Victor Hugo

The profession of airline captaincy is not simply the ability to fly and command a large aeroplane with skill, precision and verve. It also involves self imposed discipline as a way of life, an ongoing resolve—year in, year out—to operate at all times and in all circumstances within defined parameters of safety and aircraft performance.

— Macarthur Job

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Integrity has no need of rules.

— Albert Camus

I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.

— Arnold Palmer

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

— John Wooden

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

— Martin Luther King, Jr

I'm challenged to do a little bit better than yesterday, each time I fly.

— Bob Hoover

Winning was fun, but so was the struggle to improve. That was one of the lessons you learned from the game. Basketball was a clear example of virtue rewarded.

— Bill Bradley

I like the competition better than the victory, the fighting better than the winning.

— Sterling Moss

Speed was to me way down on my list of priorities. It certainly came after steadiness, rig safety, hull safety, endurance, and ease of handling. Give me those and I will cross an ocean at one knot quite happily

— Tristan Jones

Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If we explore success from a Martial point of view, we see that it needs to be understood in relationship to Shinken Gata—real life combat. It is not something that can be measured by degrees of rank; there are no trophies or awards that can adequately demonstrate proficiency in success.

— Peter Crocoll

There is no such thing as luck; only adequate and inadequate preparation to cope with the statistical universe.

— Robert Heinlein

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

— Buddha

Next Flight

The sea knows awareness, she knows patience, she knows staunchness, she knows foresight, yet she knows nothing of man’s longing for riches or fame or even of his efforts to overcome or to thwart her.

— Tristan Jones

Standing on tiptoe, one is unsteady.
Taking long steps, one quickly tires.
Showing off, one shows unenlightenment.
Displaying self-righteousness, one reveals vanity.
Praising the self, one earns no respect.
Exaggerating achievements, once cannot long endure
Followers of the Way, consider these.

— Tao Te Ching