wiscoaster
Member
Well, it's a different philosophy toward life, I guess. Being prepared is how I avoid my BP skyrocketing. In my career I was a professional pilot. We what-if every concievable hypothetical scenario no matter how remote. It's how we get you safely back on the ground. Most pilots go through their entire career without experiencing an engine failure on takeoff. Yet we practice it twice a year in the sim. If it ever happens, we don't have time to get out the book and figure out how to deal with it. We have to do the right thing and do it right now or we're all dead.There is no way you can possibly imagine every what-if scenario, so trying to understand and prepare for all of them IS silly and all it does is get your BP skyrocketing.
To illustrate my point with a "flying story" (and really way off topic, my apologies) - I was once crewed with another guy who was also rated as Captain. It was his leg - ie he was PF ("pilot flying" / left seat) and I was PNF ("pilot not flying" / right seat). Captain is responsible for making inflight decisions. As we were flying westbound into stronger than forecast headwinds, and got a later start than scheduled, it looked like we'd be arriving at destination after dark, and it looked like we were pushing reserve fuel. We had a cockpit discussion about continuing or landing short to refuel. I brought up the "what-if" scenario of not being able to land at the destination. The weather was fine, so that wasn't expected to be a problem. But other things happen that close airports. He elected to continue. We made it to destination just fine but after dark as expected and proceeded to approach and land. However, immediately after landing, during rollout, the airport went absolutely pitch black from a power failure. IF we had arrived about 10 or 15 seconds later we woudn't have been able to land, and it was an airport with no other suitable airports nearby.
Ya, I guess I'm philosophically and habitually inclined toward what-iffing. I've found it to be a useful tool.
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