flight school chaos

My daughter will start flying lessons in a little over a year. She doesn’t want to be a pilot, but she thinks it will look good on a college application. Fine by me; I don’t care if she ever touches an airplane again after she gets her license…I just think it will teach her confidence, to remain calm in a crisis & most importantly, that nobody is coming to save you. You must rely on yourself & the stakes are real. I’ve flown w/ plenty of female pilots. Some were not great, but at about the same rate that some male pilots weren’t great. I remember Nanette, keeping the KC-10 steady in Afghanistan with only the standby attitude indicator after we lost literally everything else. Just humming along, like she did it everyday, and listening as we worked the checklists. I guess my point is that immediately blaming the female is out of bounds. Maybe she did have something to do with it, but so do males. By the way, the fact that you hear her voice on the radio means she wasn’t the one flying the jet…she was the “Pilot Monitoring” & runs the radios / navigation. We learn things from every crash. This one will eventually make it into a lesson plan, and students will hear the tapes. It’s not pleasant, but understanding what the cockpit environment may be like in an emergency is an important lesson. Panic is your enemy & causes you to make mistakes like shutting down the wrong engine. You must fight it, but…eventually there is probably a moment you know the fight has been lost and you are going to die. I might scream, too. There are multiple ways you leave this profession, but it comes down to two scenarios: One day, you’ll stroll out to the jet knowing this is your last flight, with your family & friends in attendance. There will be a party after. Or… One day, you’ll stroll out to the jet not knowing it’s your last flight. We hope for the former & prepare for the latter.