In an article I wrote some time ago, I highlighted several dangerous attitudes inherent in my uncle, actually in all pilots, in my experience, by offering my perspective on an aviation incident during which he was pilot in command. What follows is a short excerpt, thus may seem familiar to some readers, but bear with me while I set the stage.

At a family reunion on his mid-western farm, during a lull in the giving of rides, young children were allowed to play unsupervised in and around his parked Cessna Skyhawk. The keys were in his pocket, he thought, so what was the harm?

During their play, the children apparently switched on the autopilot, admittedly a rare option, especially in an old Skyhawk. Naturally, immediately after takeoff, the airplane dutifully banked toward the compass heading the children had inadvertently selected. Not privy to this information, my uncle fought for control as his right wing captured an armload of tall cornstalks growing in the field next to his grass strip. Then, he continued fighting the autopilot and the airplane, circling the field to land her again.

Apart from the poor judgment allowing children to play where they should not have been, directly as a result of his poor attitude, specifically, his steadfast refusal to preflight his airplane, then routinely to ignore the checklist wherein he would have discovered the errant switch, during the event, he and his passengers could easily have been killed. The event was avoidable.

Without getting too far afield here, another critical point or points my uncle cavalierly overlooked were his trying to take off from an undulating grass airstrip, tall trees at one end, on a steamy July day in Ohio, in a Skyhawk with her anemic 160 horses, with four heavy adults aboard. For the non-pilot among my readers, consider that each one of these conditions individually, even more so collectively, dramatically impact an airplane’s available horsepower and thrust, its ground roll distance, acceleration, rate of climb, and its aerodynamic stall speed.

Yet, what happened in the airplane that day was not simply one incident of forgetfulness on his part, an honest mistake, or an item of consequence innocently overlooked. Such a cavalier attitude was a pattern with him; as I remember it, one that governed his entire flying career. As is usual in aviation, an event, an incident, or an accident rarely has just one cause. More often, it is a process, an evolution, a series of smaller, sometimes even innocuous events, by comparison, compounding, each making the previous one or ones worse, only then ultimately defining the event or catastrophe.

So, once again at my keyboard, I wrote this new story, not so much for me, but for my readers. I say here “for my readers” because I already learned my life lesson from my uncle’s behavior. In fact, at every level of competence, every level of skill, rating, and licensure, I have committed myself to learning from my own, as well as other people’s behavior. My aim now was to pass this wisdom on to the very piloting community I have witnessed, as a flight instructor, so often guilty of such offenses.

I submitted this article for consideration to AOPA Pilot magazine. I never heard back. I thought the article interesting and instructive. Also, I think I handled it appropriately and was fair. The article I think also was well written. Yet, it was rejected by the editorial staff.

At first, I thought the problem lay within me, as the author, to be literate. Pilot had already published one of my articles several years before. Yet, comparing the original copy with the published version, then, to all of the articles the magazine has published over the years, an insidious pattern emerged.

It occurred to me, the more I thought about it, despite the organization’s view it harbors of itself as the spokesman, the political activist for, that it has the best interests at heart of the aviation community, that the publication really has been engineered more as an entertainment magazine. By that I mean it is a safe, secure, quiet, warm, fuzzy, happy retreat, where a weekend flyer can don his slippers and, his pipe full of his favorite tobacco, relax in his easy chair, in his private study, and enjoy a non-threatening read.

Bear in mind the reality of our world: pilots keep acting foolishly, keep making poor choices, suffering from the wrong attitude, keep practicing stupidity and carelessness in the cockpit, and keep getting killed by their own actions. Yet, from what I have read, the articles offered therein never challenge the pilot to probe deep within himself to address his own frustrations, fears, concerns, even foolishness and carelessness, those roadblocks that prevent him from becoming a better pilot.

The only reason my published article slid past the publications’ editors, then the brutal editorial executioner who exacted further edits, ultimately ending up in the November issue, is that while the article did probe deep within this particular pilot to address those very frustrations, fears, and concerns, the pilot under scrutiny in the article was me.

These are themes the FAA drones on about endlessly: challenging those bad habits, that wrong thinking, checking ourselves and our attitudes, exercising good judgment, being cautious, relying upon checklists, ad infinitum. However, the FAA can easily and routinely be ignored because it is an institution and no one listens to them anyway.

The tone of the magazine is one of never challenging, admonishing, even pointing to inherent flaws in the human animal that lead to these tragic events. Yet, while those flaws themselves that lead to people getting hurt cannot be fixed, they do not need to have tragic outcomes if we are conscientious and strict with ourselves.

It occurred to me that the publication reflects the way not just pilots, but the masses, too, seem to prefer to live their lives: quietly, peacefully, acquiescently, endlessly spoon fed happy and soothing, reassuring, fun, and entertaining stories about life with a happy ending.

Otherwise, we prefer to settle back into our quiet, desperate lives and read gentle articles by staff-or regularly-contributing writers about some airplane of personal or historical significance, perhaps the fun he had flying a particular airplane, or something else equally innocuous related to aviation. One month, the magazine honored revered celebrity and aviation poster boy, Harrison Ford, who had written an article having little to nothing to do with aviation.

While an airplane was discussed, his article focused upon the making of the film, Six Days; Seven Nights, in which he has the starring role. In fact, I thought the tone of the article arrogant, by virtue of his celebrity Ford commandeering a venue in which even gifted writers struggle for recognition.

At one point, referring to the airplane he flew in the movie, Ford wrote, “I liked it, so I bought it.” That is ego, pure and simple, and also condescending. I am sure there is not a reader among us aching to be in a position financially simply to write a check for an expensive airplane.

Yet, the editorial staff made both him and his article into that issue’s centerpiece, following up in later issue with a fawning interview of Ford by regularly-contributing writer, Barry Schiff. Spectacles such as these are entertainment, arguably, but I still am at a loss to comprehend how the phenomenon has the best interests at heart of the piloting community.

In another of several articles I wrote, I focused upon a young, instrument-rated private pilot who, immediately after takeoff, tried to change the radio frequency. Fifteen feet above the runway during climbout is not the time to be dialing in new radio frequencies. Since most aviation accidents occur during the takeoff and landing phases of flight, adjustments to aircraft controls, engine checks, other preparations, as well as such changes to frequencies are identified on the written checklist, and should have been accomplished within the run-up area, before takeoff.

When eyes are focused inside the cockpit during flight, if the distracted pilot looks right, then leans right to reach the radio and study the display, he tends to bank right, which is exactly what we did. From my right seat, looking out my side window, I suddenly realized we were banked forty-five degrees to the right, over the taxiway, by this time, at about twenty feet altitude, headed toward the T-hangers. The grave danger to life and property of what this young man was trying to do, when he was trying to do it, cannot be exaggerated nor can this point be belabored.

It is distractions such as these that lead to, and are the reason we teach and practice, departure or power-on stalls. This young man’s attitude created the condition of an accident waiting to happen, and it is that lapse in his judgment that incurred my admonishment. Yes, shocking as it is in our culture today, I had the audacity to hold this young man accountable.

In another article, I admonished a young private pilot who insisted upon speaking to a friend over his cell phone while he and I were trying to talk to each other during the preflight inspection. While he finally hung up, clearly his mind was elsewhere because he performed the preflight not just improperly, but incompletely, among other things, leaving in place the cowl plugs.

For the non-pilot among my readers, cowl plugs are foam plugs which protect the parked airplane’s engine from nesting birds. Failure to remove these plugs could have damaged the engine in flight by allowing it to overheat.

The awkwardness with which this young man navigated the checklist compelled me to consider the uncomfortable likelihood that this may well have been the first time he ever consulted one.

The young man in the second article was only a private pilot. Still, what he was doing, which should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense, anyone not glued to his technology to the point of isolation as so many people are today, is dangerous behavior for any pilot, in fact, anyone. Not to put too fine a point on it, why I became disabled and now suffer continuous pain and limited mobility at the hands of another driver years ago is because he was texting.

The checkride this young man took and the FAA license bestowed upon him now have granted him the privilege of flight, as well as the responsibility to the rest of us for our very lives. Yet, he did not take this privilege, this responsibility, to heart. That was why, in the article, I emphasized his transgression.

The reason I admonished him was to make the point that this is not a game or a hobby, this is real. His safety and ours, the protection of equipment, as well as our collective longevity will depend upon his developing the maturity and skill, moreover the attitude, of treating this experience with the reverence it deserves.

In an effort not so much to balance the equation in my article, but more to reinforce my point of this young man’s egregious error, his attitude, I included a second vignette later in the story about a fellow flying club member with whom I flew one evening who also harbored a dangerous attitude, one that could just as easily have gotten her killed.

She was sitting in the cockpit when I finally arrived at the airplane after collecting the keys and notebook from the office. I climbed into the right seat, settled back, and, reaching for my seatbelt, asked this girl now slouching in her seat, leaning heavy against her door if she’d already done the preflight inspection.

“Oh no,” she laughed cavalierly, with a dismissive wave, “I never do a preflight.” Hang on. Her attitude sounds suspiciously familiar. As I recall, that near-catastrophe on his Ohio farm at the hands of my uncle that I highlighted earlier in this story was because he also refused to preflight his airplane.

Staring at her incredulously, I said, “Well, I always do a preflight,” then climbed back out, checklist in hand. The entire time I was performing the preflight inspection on this rental airplane, a rental airplane, no less, she maintained her repose. The operative word in the last sentence is rental, which should alert any conscientious pilot to the possibility that the airplane may not have been flown, much less left, by the previous pilot in the condition we would prefer.

Despite my efforts, we subsequently had a problem with the airplane that evening while taxiing, I believe it was with the radio display, where we had to return to get different airplane from the flight line. As the ground controller cleared us to taxi back to the ramp, despite my explanation, my companion was unable to grasp the need for a different aircraft. The danger of her attempting to fly after a tiring day at the office is a condition addressed by the letter “F” in aviators’ IM SAFE checklist: Fatigue, which is yet another checklist she chose to ignore, and may well have played a role in this event.

Still, she slouched once again against her door within the cozy cockpit of this new bird while I performed the preflight. The second airplane also developed a minor issue, this time in flight. Even so, in both cases, I not only had to identify the problems for her, but what I had to do to rectify them. She committed other mistakes during the flight as well, ones that identified an equally dangerous mindset, but I will not encumber this story discussing those.

These vignettes are real. I simply was reporting fact. Furthermore, I was fair in my recounting of the details in each story. In this case, I suspect the editors did not appreciate the publicity I afforded the girl for her cavalier behavior.

She had a bad attitude; that’s fact. It does not mean she is a bad person. Just because she is a girl who is also a pilot does not mean she cannot act just as dangerously or irresponsibly as a guy, does not mean she cannot make a mistake, does not mean she cannot be killed just as easily by her own actions. Notice that death is not subject to the laws of politically correctness. The Grim Reaper has his own time-tested way of enforcing accountability.

The girl that evening acted no more, no less foolishly than did the young men I identified earlier. The difference in her case is that she is in possession of both an instrument rating and more flight experience overall. Thus, by definition, she should have known better. Incidentally, I never heard back from the magazine’s editorial staff.

In an inexplicable flourish of writing these last few months, I wrote eight additional articles. After allowing several people to read them for content and clarity, interest and readability, my daughter posted them for me on my website. Apparently suffering once again from a deplorable surge of optimism, knowing in my heart and mind full well the outcome, I got the idea of offering all eight to Pilot for consideration.

Since she was my only contact, I wrote Jill of the magazine’s editorial staff. She insisted she remembered me from my published article several years earlier, although I think she was just being polite. At any rate, she encouraged me to submit these new ones. Despite my well-known ineptitude with respect to computers, all eight arrived safely to her computer. Jill gave me the telephone number to her desk. She warned that reviewing them would take time on her end, but that I should feel free to contact her.

A month elapsed, then a few more days, with still no word from Jill. Finally, convinced where this was headed, I sent her an email, even carefully phrasing the letter giving her an out. She did not respond.

Now, Pilot historically will not contact authors if the article submitted is not accepted for publication. Still, in my case, I was simply following up upon the invitation to contact Jill personally, so one would think she, or someone on her staff, would have offered at the very least a curt “get lost” or a soothing “you cannot write” or an admonishing “what you wrote is too confrontational.” Instead–nothing. I suppose even “get lost” would be too confrontational.

Yet, while not all of my articles necessarily were intended for publication, many people have read them in their entirety and have offered rave reviews, some hungry readers even demanding I turn out more, and immediately. In fact, one of the aforementioned articles I consider my masterpiece.

Everything I write focuses upon human behavior as a theme because these forces are what govern every event. One of my favorite, thus unavoidable themes is accountability. I can’t help this perception; I never asked for it, it’s just how I view the world. Still, what is the point of writing if not to instruct? Bear in mind, rarely is it the airplane on her own that does something stupid or careless or negligent.

Actually, as I already suggested, I knew rejection would be the outcome of the exercise even before I contacted Jill. Still, I had to try. Yet, while frustrating, on a positive note, what this experience does for me is to reinforce the point of this article. The magazine has a huge readership internationally. The forum is already in place, interest piqued, readers thirsty.

My frustration is borne from the fact that I see the magazine as irresponsible, electing to reject an enormous window of opportunity to effect positive change among the aviation community. Instead, political correctness and tepidity, happiness, harmony, and leaving the room feeling good, relationships intact, appear to be the guidelines of the publication, as well as, at all costs, striving not to confront, offend, or hold the reader accountable for his behavior. This is what I call the Mr. Rogers/Sesame Street approach to aviation.

Some time ago, a friend sent Pilot an email complaining that he had recently read a three-page article published therein. He wrote irritated that those three pages could easily have been condensed into two paragraphs. The rest was verbiage, fluff, filler, superfluous ramblings and, by his own admission, an exercise for which he has neither the time nor the interest, the inclination nor the capacity. The response he received from the editors was “we want writers to be able to express themselves.”

Is that so? If that is the case, then, why did the staff edit the life out of my published article? Why will the editors not consider, much less publish my more recent works? Why will Jill not even communicate with me after reading what I have written?

Aviation is one of the worst offenders, if not the worst offender, of its members allowing their skills to ebb, their judgment to become clouded, worse, for their egos to grow their eyes bigger than their stomachs, so to speak; that is, for their bravado, in some cases, fatally to overshadow their abilities. Because of the machismo inherent in aviation, pilots are probably the guiltiest of resisting the uncomfortable assessment that their coveted skills are not what they once were.

Pilots, being the human beings they are, already are at grave risk of becoming a danger to themselves, if not to the rest of us. Considering how little room there is in aviation for error, it seems we cannot afford to allow pilots to become complacent, to settle into soft chairs of indifference for a comforting, consoling read.

The activity of piloting demands from the rest of us that we require pilots to keep their edge, a state of readiness too easily lost. Military and commercial pilots fly often, keeping that edge. Even then they must be reevaluated frequently. That is the nature of those jobs.

Civilian pilots usually do not fly for their jobs. The only incentive civilians have to maintain their flying skills and proper attitude, oddly enough, are not regulations or warnings by a pesky FAA, not the reality and frequent news reports of the aftermath of practicing stupidity, carelessness, and short-sightedness in the cockpit. Rather, it is the fear of a potentially-costly flight review. Since that review occurs only every two years, the incentive is not strong enough for pilots to keep those skills sharp.

This is the arena where the magazine ideally should be more active. If the organization truly has the best interests at heart of the aviation community, should it not consistently challenge the pilot to become as good as he can possibly be? Instead, if at all, it relies upon the tenuous power of inspiration inherent in the occasional article to effect any change in behavior. Don’t get me wrong, inspiration is a good thing, for those easily inspired.

In light of the plethora of accident reports on file, it seems clear to me, however, that many people do not respond to subtleties. I offer that assessment because pilots keep bending metal, keep practicing carelessness, keep acting foolishly, keep crashing, and keep getting killed, so the subtle approach apparently is not working.

This is probably the main reason I became bored with Pilot as a publication. Within its pages are happy, soothing, endlessly-safe, non-threatening, non-confrontational, politically-correct articles concerning aspects related to aviation, in some cases only peripherally, about which the average reader knows little to nothing and cares even less. He will never have access to the rare, sometimes exotic airplanes staff writers get to fly for free, then write about. Thus, any enthusiasm he carries with him from this last hour or two of wearing his slippers, smoking his pipe, sitting in his easy chair, reading this insipid magazine will be vicarious.

In my career as a flight instructor, I have seen too many otherwise well-intentioned pilots more interested in saving money during a biennial flight review than actually relearning how to fly safely, in fact, even if only to basic standards. Too many pilots with whom I have flown actually resented, a few even vocal about, being held during a flight review even to private pilot Practical Test Standards.

Two of those pilots even said, walking sweaty and exhausted back to the office after their respective flights, “Man, that was harder than my checkride”!

That complaint needs to be put into perspective. In the two years since his last flight review, he cannot possibly realize what he has lost. Since he does not fly nor does he perform various maneuvers every day, he cannot truly hold himself to a standard simply because he has no standard. This is precisely the reason the regulations require a flight review every twenty-four calendar months. Thus, to use a carpenter’s terminology, in those twenty-four months of essentially flying alone, then only occasionally, he can accumulate a significant error and not realize it.

My response was, “What are you talking about? These are basic maneuvers. You should know how to do them. You had to do them for your checkride. You have not done them in two years. You are expecting me to reteach you in two and a half hours what it took your primary instructor six months to a year to teach you.”

After that admonition, each man fell silent. Typical of the human animal, these guys each tried to make this fresh, apparently-distasteful perception of themselves I was offering them my fault instead; so yes, I placed accountability right back where it belongs.

As the instructor, a man who teaches the stuff, a man who flies not only every day, but usually several times a day, I am better positioned not only to have a standard, but to hold myself to it. Thus, I am better poised to assess his deficiencies.

In their minds, these guys are pilots and don’t need improving. Period. End of discussion. Recurrent training, to them, is for teachers and doctors, perhaps the occasional bank manager. This is the very bravado governing behavior that often turns an otherwise normal flight into an ugly aviation incident or accident, or at the very least, scares him and his passengers to death. My thoughts fly direct at this juncture back to the terrifying event that steamy July day on my uncle’s mid-western farm.

The sobering thought running through my mind that captures a tragic attitude all too often seen is a hypothetical dialogue between those pilots and their wives, “Goodbye, Honey, I’m off to my flight review. It shouldn’t take long. I will see you in about an hour. We can go shopping then.”

The flight review is the pilot’s opportunity to hone his skills, to become fresh and sharp again, to reacquire his edge under the watchful eye of a professional instructor. This is the purpose of the flight review. It is not a test. It is recurrent training, and only when the pilot can demonstrate proficiency to the PTS should he receive a log book endorsement from the instructor. The event should be his sole mission for that day, as long as it takes, rather than an unpleasant chore to be fit between other, more mundane activities.

From what I have witnessed as an instructor, many pilots, many flight instructors themselves, resent the flight review as merely an unnecessary, expensive, inconvenient formality, and it often is treated as such.

We flight instructors fly often, usually every day, often many times a day. We eat, sleep, dream, and talk about flight and ground-reference maneuvers, performance tables, flight planning and crosswind technique, safety and the right attitude to the point of saturation, if not exhaustion. We usually know what we’re doing. We also can easily recognize poor technique, as well as what caused those skills to ebb.

Time, complacency, lack of interest, ego, the wrong attitude, infrequency of practice, among others, all contribute to the pilot’s deficiencies. I have conducted many flight reviews in my career and my private assessment of the piloting skills of virtually every candidate as we motored through the event has been, your skills are not as good as you think they are. This is why I tend to be strict as a teacher and spend the time to retrain these pilots.

My critics might argue that I’m strict in the cockpit simply to keep the FAA off my back, from seeking me out in the event that pilot crashes on the way home from his flight review with me. I’m not worried about the FAA. I only want to help him once again approach the pilot his ego seems to think he is. Since I do not harbor within me the power to change that long-standing image he has of himself as the aviation ace of his youth, I can at least try to improve his skills, finding some happy medium between what the FAA and common sense think is a good pilot and what his ego seems to think makes a good one.

So, what is it worth to him to get it right? What is it worth to him to satisfy his family such that they will continue to feel safe with him in the left seat? In the final analysis, it’s not the instructor who will make him a better pilot. It also is not the instructor who is being unfair keeping him out in the practice area helping him reacquire his forgotten skills, takeoffs and landings, drilling on emergency procedures, costing him more money; in the end, keeping him from his family, keeping him from . . . shopping.

The success or failure of this experience rests squarely upon the shoulders of the pilot, and it is his attitude throughout the experience that will make him a better pilot. His salvation as a pilot, as husband and father, as a person responsible to the rest of us as a member of society, lies within.