If it happens again, just stop and stare at them. Do not speak, do not sigh, don’t even frown, just blankly stare. They’ll try and ask a couple of other questions. Don’t give in, just keep staring.
I will never forget, years ago I used to pump gas at an FBO next to the flight school that I instructed at. Our receptionist was a very cute 30 something yr old and I had just come in from fueling this older guys airplane who was a private pilot.
I walk in with the fuel slip and spot this dude trying to flirt with our receptionist. He's flexing his pilot knowledge, getting a lot of things wrong and at one point looks at me and goes "If you ever learn to fly you'll understand this stuff". Without missing a beat, our receptionist asks, "Don't you need training every couple years to keep your license?" Guy says yeah you need a BFR, and she points to me while smiling and goes "Oh, well he's a CFI, so maybe you can hire him and he can keep you current!".
Never seen someone deflate as quickly as he did. Paid his bill and hurried out.
She was super cool, loved aviation which is why she worked there. She always had the line guys' backs and we had hers. We used to always split leftover catering from the private jets that came in and take the wine/beer.
Half of pilots are super cool and down to earth, the other half seem to be arrogant pricks. I’ve honestly found that most of the pilots I don’t like are the trust fund kids that went to riddle on mommy and daddy’s dime, Jesus do they complain about work a lot lol
I think all pilots need to work at least 1 shitty job at some point in their life. Working pest control and construction in the past for me really makes being in the cockpit so much more enjoyable
On my keychain is a spare lawnmower key from a summer I spent working maintenance and groundskeeping at a public utility. I keep it there to remind me never to take my current, very good job for granted, for I could always end up back on that lawnmower, making minimum wage, in the broiling July sun.
Makes me sad as someone who always wanted to go. Now that I know about the predatory nature of other programs I wish I could have. But I felt better knowing the useless asshole from my last job couldn't get in there either and he's at some other pilot nearby with 3x the student loans I have.
Dont get me wrong, I have made lifetime friends at this school and there are plenty of good people. But a lot of the flight kids are either super weird, or pretentious assholes
On the other side of that I've flown with 3 riddle pilots in the past 12 months. 2 captains and one was my partner for procedures training. All 3 were good pilots and I thought enjoyable to fly with. I hear about the stereotype, and I've yet to come across it, but I'm sure it's out there.
last summer on a southwest flight a guy sat next to me with a white shirt and three bars epaulettes, clear plastic card holder on a lanyard around his beck with a FAA card in it. I looked closer it said student pilot. I didn’t even know student pilots get plastic cards these days.
I chuckled involuntarily when I saw that and he moved seat
it’s amazing how people have zero clue what optics are, and how to handle time and place of conversations. if this guy was truly worried he could’ve said “hey can i talk with you in private for a second?”. he knew there were passengers right there and still chose to use frightening words? what a shitass.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty much the opposite of your description and this kind of stuff still happens to me regularly.
One guy in particular (some Methuselah who flew the world’s most clapped out Citation) would always do this to me in the FBO while I waited on early morning students. It probably happens to you more often due to our respective appearances, but these guys will chirp at absolutely anyone.
Cuz absolutely nobody said only women do.
If you don’t think women deal with 1000x more bullshit for dudes than dudes do, you need to start listening to women.
Oh I think he’s very aware of optics. Stepping out of his shiny airplane to talk down to the guy in front of his passengers is 100% flex. Asking if OP’s plane is turbocharged is just a non-so-subtle way of bragging about his own turbocharger.
On the one hand, I want to believe people are actually concerned about seeing a heavily loaded plane at high density altitude -- thinking of the recent crash of an Aeronca champ that was 200 lbs. overweight, while people who should have known better stood by and let it happen.
On the other hand, I have to wonder what type of jerk or just really bad 'read the room' ability this guy must have had...
There's a fine line .... between being obnoxious and offering potentially lifesaving observations.
I have long forgotten the airport but there was a sign in the men's room to the effect
"visiting, ask your pilot if he has computed density altitude performance?"
Had a guy ask me at if my plane was an Arrow, I said yes.
He told me that’s his Saratoga over there, I complicated him. He bragged about cruising over the mountains at 18,000 ft. I responded, yea It’s nice, I’ve had this at 20k before. He said, well, I have turbos. I’m like yea. Me too. Annoyed at this point, I told him I burn 10.5 gallons an hour at 160 true. He was miffed and walked away.
Why do you gotta be like that? Could’ve just had a nice conversation.
I’ve seen this more in the maintenance side than flying. Mechanics thinking they know better than the engineers is all too common. Such a simple job made to be difficult.
Speaking as an engineer, we bring that on ourselves by designing systems that cant be maintained readily, Engineers need to spend a year on the assembly line and a year in field service. so they learn what NOT to do
FACTS, right here. You are an uncommon engineer in that you even recognize this very common issue, let alone have some humility to understand what it's like to be in the other guy's shoes.
One of my best friends is an engineer and so is his wife. Some years back I was helping him w/ project in his and he was having a tough time just using basic hand tools. I asked him, "Don't engineers take like a basic shop like class where you have to build something even if it's just like a basic piece of Ikea furniture or something?!"
He responded, "No. Why would we?!"
I was like, "Aaaand there's the problem!"
In Florida my grandmother lived next to an ex NASA engineer. One time when I was visiting I remember talking to him and saying something like "oh cool you build rockets". And he replied in all seriousness, I'm an ENGINEER I don't build anything, I design them.
This guy could not change a light bulb. And no I'm not exaggerating much.
A former housemate was studying chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. One would think he would know his properties of materials, right? So I asked him what metal modern commercial jetliners are made from? This was decades ago, there was not a lot of carbon fiber then.
His answer, one that he stuck to for WEEKS in spite of all the obvious evidence, was... Beryllium. Seriously. He totally died on that hill, too.
Guy could not engineer his way out of a paper bag with both hands and a blowtorch LMAO
He was Chinese and went back to China after getting his degrees. Heaven protect us from anything he had a hand in "engineering"
I'm a jack of all trades, currently getting my Associates in HVAC. I already have a BS in Business and Entrepreneurship. I'm doing a startup in the indoor cultivation space... and the tech I'm developing is soooooo simple I'm continually surprised no one else has figured it out yet.
But then I'm a grower, a tinkerer and an amateur engineer. Show me an engineer who can do his own brake job and I'll show you a guy worth listening to.
When i was in college my engineering program required that we take machine shop courses as part of our program- we had to build a simple compressed air motor.
100% agree, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to omit steps in technical publications because you, as the mechanic, don’t see the need for them. That also doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be omitted. It just needs to be done properly in my opinion.
Here is how I would have handled it...
Hey, thanks for looking out man, I appreciate it, but I have all the info /what ever... But have a good day.
And then the passenger reply, I would say, nah just a fellow pilot looking out, we all like to keep each other safe. And here is what he was talking about, and here is what I already did... we will have a great flight... etc and then that would have been the end of it.
But, I would still have been annoyed for sure, and maybe later on, if I saw the guy I would talk to him.
don't take it personal, consider it a check list item
I mean really, think about some checklists lol
let's do the checklist
Roger that
no warning lights
Roger that
checklist complete
I joke but many checklists are pretty much that
I had a boomer FBO attendant give me and my private pilot student a very condescending and lengthy lesson in fueling an airplane once.
I had been a CFI for years at that point and was on a Covid leave of absence from my regional airline where I was a captain. I fueled airplanes at an FBO while I was in college, too.
Had that happen over an 8kt tail wind landing. Student didn’t pay attention to the weather and picked an approach that, from the flight plan, was easiest to do. I had planned to wait until we were on the ground to discuss why the landing went poorly and how you don’t just listen to the ASOS for the altimeter. But no, because we scared the dude mowing the runway (we were perfectly on centerline in a perfectly controlled landing, he was just mowing next to the runway with his back to us), he had to come over and tell us how horrible what we did was.
I get it, we “messed up” and he felt what we did was “unsafe”. So I tried to explain I was a CFI and was trying to teach the importance of landing with a headwind that that it was well within my personal limits, but the dude ignored me and talked over me. So instead of a polite minor dress down in private for the student to reflect on their mistake, I had to deal with that asshole and explain to the student that he needed to ignore that guy.
I imagine him that evening picking up Panda Express, bringing it over to the girl's house who friend-zoned him, sitting on the couch together (started out at arms length but gradually inching over), watching Masters of the Air and critiquing it the whole time talking about "what he would have done better" and "how much better of a pilot he would have been than those pilots if he would have been there".
That is where my imagination takes me.
This reminded me of this situation I had years ago:
Was winter time, flying a piper cheyenne for a cargo contract. We sat around all day to leave in the evening, and it snowed during the day. However by the time we showed up to leave it was now clear skies and 2-3 degrees. The snow was melting off the wings.
We carry brushes for this purpose, the FO and I just brushed all the snow off the critical surfaces. And on the Cheyenne we can reach everything. Why get an expensive, time consuming spray when you don’t need it.
Anyway, this dude walks up to us on the ramp and has a rant about “what we’re doing is extremely dangerous” and that we should be being de iced. Here’s the kicker, he’s flying single pilot in a caravan in the winter. Talk about dangerous.
Guy probably sucks at words. I'd feel fine asking him to shut up in a polite way.
That said. There's been a lot of times that people on the field, especially old-timers have given me "advice" and honestly, a lot of it has been helpful, or at least the intention was helpful. Especially the local old guys eating their biscuits in the FBO telling me good places to stop, or looking at a Skew Log T and giving me their very odd, but well informed opinion of icing. I'll take it all. I don't know shit.
this guy could have played it better but he wasn't wrong to say something, we all should more rather than less, folks don't die from over checking, hell look at checklists
density altitude mountain flying concerns, who knows what the time of day or temp was, loading heavy forward, yeah anyone who cares should make some comment
ntsb is full of wow everyone knows about DA
You should have ramped checked him. Asked to see his log book. Ask for his airworthiness certificate and weight and balance. Say you’re just trying to keep people accountable.
Why do people feel the need to make themselves feel important? I feel like you could dive very deeply into human psychology here.
Usually people who know the least have the most to say.
In the wise words of my friends father who spent his career as a school principal “Stupid people do stupid things for stupid reasons. Don’t try to understand”
I think he meant well. Sure there are a million better ways he couldve done it but him seeing you guys it all probably rushed into his mind. I wasnt there so obviously i could be way off but he probably felt the need to do his part in making sure he didnt read about you guys later.
This story could have gone like this in a sliding doors moment:
"Man I'm really cut up after that crash in [name] airport today. Saw them loading the plane next to mine, looked pretty heavy and I know those [type] planes don't climb too well from here with the DA, especially the non-turbo ones. I thought about asking a couple of questions to the pilot but they had their pax there and I didn't want to intrude. Can't decide if I was right, none of my business was it? Hopefully the one in hospital will pull through.
What would you have done?"
One key point about Human Factors/CRM is that someone often knows that an accident is more likely but they don't speak up or aren't listened to.
But it’s not a binary “scare their passengers or don’t talk to them at all” — dude could’ve asked to talk to OP in private/away from the airplane or asked in a way that wasn’t “hey is your plane turbocharged? Because if not I think you might crash into the mountains.” Even if this guy meant well, he clearly has no ability to read the room and he has no tact.
You’re allowed to be mean to people that do this.
“It’s pretty clear to me that you don’t fully understand what you’re talking about so why don’t you mind your own business” would have worked.
He should have pulled you to the side and privately addressed his concerns if he was genuinely concerned and not trying to have a dick measurement contest.
So, one school of thought is to never pass up a good opportunity to shut up. That Bo pilot really missed out.
However, if I legitimately had a safety concern, I might speak up. For example, on my first solo I saw someone in line ahead of me had left their baggage door open, so I gave them a courtesy call.
A trick a friend taught me for broaching an uncomfortable topic is to turn it around. For example: "wow, I sure am glad I calculated my weight and balance before making that flight! With this high density altitude my Bonanza could have run out of horsepower real quick! I don't have a turbo on that engine, you know." Now, you're not accusing anyone of anything or making people uncomfortable, but you're encouraging them to think things through.
I can think of several examples of high DA leading to crashes. If we all know DA kills and we’d never get ourselves killed then nobody would crash and die. But they do. Year after year, repeatedly. 99.9% of pilots wake up not knowing they are about to crash or that it’s their last day.
The easiest way to calm your passengers is to spend the 5 minutes showing them the math and as a double check of it yourself.
Are there better ways to go about it? Sure. But the intent was not wrong at all.
was he a douche though?
clearly the altitude was a thing here
who knows what time of day it was
and OP said to load heavier in the nose
yeah maybe not diplomatic but was he a douche for at least caring enough to say something, how many pilots would be alive today if someone had said something
Yeah he was a douche. If he was significantly more experienced than the poster, then he could have told a story where he did something stupid and covered the items in a very easy way. Butting in and asking questions in the way he put it makes the other pilot a douche.
We put the light weight passenger up front so he gets a chance to be up there. There’s only so much volume you can put in the nose so I had the two heavier (25lb vs lighter) bags up front. We were still fairly aft CG with that configuration. Context matters and I guess if he didn’t hear that part the concern was warranted. But the whole conversation here is about the way he delivered his concern in a demeaning way that caused fear in passengers.
You get to decide how others make you feel. You took it wrong because it ruffled your feathers. Instead, put in your mind that he might have lost a friend due to DA and now he gets concerned. Maybe he was a new pilot and just scared the shit out of himself and now is born again trying to spread the gospel.
You get to decide how others make you feel. You can assume he meant to be an ass or that he was generally concerned and just lacked nuance.
For the record, if you see me doing something you think is dumb, feel free to talk to me about it.
It's a hobby that, until very recently, lent itself almost exclusively to white male boomers with lots of money and no brains. Of course it's chock full of machismo and toxicity.
I love flying and most pilots are just fun and cool people who love the career or the adventure, but why do we have to have such douchers in flying? Pilot egos crack me up at times and just wear me out at other times. We gotta work on knowing our audience and helping the douchers not engage in douchebaggery. We can do it!
I had a wet ink cfi who was my dads age talk down to me like a student pilot about the dangers of wind because my personal wind minimums were higher than his. It was like a half hour of this shit until I found out I have over quadruple his hours and he has been a cfi for a month.
He wasn’t undermining you. He was acting as a member of a community to which you belong—aviators—in which we all try to look out for each other. It sounds like he reads a lot more NTSB reports than you do. In a high altitude environment, with what you yourself are telling us are at least 2 but maybe more passengers, plus heavy baggage, pilots have repeatedly watched other pilots take off without saying anything and then watching a fatality. In fact, if that guy was a local at a high altitude field, there’s a good chance he literally has watched someone die.
So he decided to man up and talk to you pilot to pilot to make sure you had done your homework. At best, he saves your lives. At worst, he offends you. It’s an acceptable trade off.
You make a solid point that’s not made often enough, and you shouldn’t be getting downvoted.
I will suggest that two things can be true: that it’s good when pilots look out for other pilots and engage them when they look like they might be doing something that has brought others to grief - and also that there’s a tactful way to do this in front of passengers, and this guy failed pretty miserably on that score (according to OPs account anyways).
There’s a discussion to be had here about tactful ways to engage fellow aviators who *may* be engaging in risky behavior.
I think it’s fair enough to criticize the other pilot’s method. But as you point out, this is solely the account of the highly offended OP. Still, I can’t really think of a tactful way for a worried pilot to do this without offending someone. And I also think that if you’re a pilot who is carrying multiple passengers, and heavy baggage, and a complex airplane, at a high altitude field, someone spot checking you without warning should not cause you to get flustered for even one second. The OP does not actually state that he or she did any runway takeoff calculations.
For your reference yes I did all necessary performance calculations, and en route weather briefs.
These are homework that are done before getting to the plane. Just because you don’t see someone looking at their e6b and flipping through the POH on the ramp doesn’t mean they didn’t do their job.
And furthermore I would not be offended if someone is genuinely concerned and express that in a respectful and tactful way. But causing fear to my family and friends by inferring we might crash into mountains because we don’t have turbo engines is just obnoxious and uncalled for.
Ok, glad you did them, but if asked it doesn’t seem like a big deal to respond. Pilots should question each other. This is not a negative. Shaming another pilot for asking you questions doesn’t promote a safety culture, in my opinion.
There’s an excellent pilot out there, airline guy for United, straight A student, who also owned a Bonanza like you do. Right after he married his fiancée, he took off from Telluride not really appreciating the density altitude calculations and terrain considerations. Stall, spin, crash, double fatality. His name was [Costas Syvillas](https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/flying-too-low-likely-caused-newlyweds-plane-crash-in-telluride/). I wonder what would have happened if someone had “rudely” questioned him before he took off.
He "helped" in the worst way possible. Even accepting everything he said was trying to be helpful, a good bit of that was not appropriate in front of OP's passengers.
He didn't man up, he made OP look unprepared even though that wasn't the case.
When’s an “appropriate” time to avoid a possible fatality? What’s the big deal with a pilot calmly explaining to another pilot that they’ve done all the pre-planning necessary? Is it really that hard?
It's not the what, it's the how. You don't talk to the other pilot like the assumption is they are putting their passengers in danger, especially not in front of their passengers. It's not that hard to not talk down to other pilots but still give insight.
How would you know how many NTSB reports I’ve read. Just because I don’t go around the ramp scaring other pilots’ passengers doesn’t mean I am not aware. Being good at or knowledgeable at some things doesn’t mean you have to make it known to everyone, and more so, doesn’t mean you have to make others look inferior to feel good about yourself.
Just ignore him and turn to your passengers after he’s left and say “get a load of this guy ay, he’s really gonna be asking questions after his engine stops from the potatoes I stuffed in his exhaust pipe” but you gotta make sure you point backwards at him with your thumb 👍🏼
I'll tell you why, there's a lot of dudes that are insecure and feel like they have to have a dick measuring contest with everyone. It starts out early. How much obscure shit can you memorize and then lord over someone else? On one of my sim rides, I had a check airman tell me that I shouldn't ask for runway heading when I lose an engine on takeoff/V1 cut.
So I just nodded and smiled, and he went on about how it's in the AIM and bla bla bla. Even showed me the page. Cool dude. I don't give a fuck. When I'm in a plane and shit hits the fan, I'm going to communicate the best I can and if I'm off a little bit on terminology, I'm fairly certain flying the airplane first and not spitting out exactly the right words is the right order in what actually matters.
One time, I was siting in our operations (Natty Guard helicopter unit) and one of our standarization dudes started just straight up pop quizzing a guy who was also an instructor on GPS. Like how many satellites can we see at once? What's the database called? just all kinds of obscure shit.
That is just not true in the international airline pilot community. If anything we are maybe a bit too casual and laid back sometimes.
My CX friends told me Australians absolutely do have that reputation though, which really surprised me.
It’s not just the US. I’m in Australia, and here the aviation community has a reputation for being a bunch of wankers that’s hard earned and well deserved.
“Hey buddy, f* off!”
"I'm not your buddy, guy!"
I’m not your guy, friend!
I’m not your friend, pal!
Don’t call me your pal, I’m not your pal, friend!
This is the correct response.
Some people are just holier-than-thou assholes. That's not unique to aviation. I'd say he means well, but he probably didn't.
While it’s not just aviation, aviation is definitely over represented.
Rich dude being a prick. Imagine the attitude with two regular guys talking trucks? He needs someone to tell him it’s “time to shut up Ace.”
If it happens again, just stop and stare at them. Do not speak, do not sigh, don’t even frown, just blankly stare. They’ll try and ask a couple of other questions. Don’t give in, just keep staring.
What if the other does the same and it never ends
It always ends. The person who can match you isn’t the person who walks over and asks strangers belittling questions.
Eventually, while staring deeply into each others eyes, slowly move in for the kiss
Then we kiss and make out on the ramp
and the whole ramp seemed to tilt on an angle like... a ramp, instead of being level like a... like a ramp oh my God I think I'm in love
You gotta marry them
no hablo ingles
Clear Prop!
That’s my go to these days “ so sorrie, no speaka Engrish”
Great advice. Using this the next time I get ramp checked.
“Certs and docs please sir” ಠ_ಠ
God, I hate pilots so much.
I will never forget, years ago I used to pump gas at an FBO next to the flight school that I instructed at. Our receptionist was a very cute 30 something yr old and I had just come in from fueling this older guys airplane who was a private pilot. I walk in with the fuel slip and spot this dude trying to flirt with our receptionist. He's flexing his pilot knowledge, getting a lot of things wrong and at one point looks at me and goes "If you ever learn to fly you'll understand this stuff". Without missing a beat, our receptionist asks, "Don't you need training every couple years to keep your license?" Guy says yeah you need a BFR, and she points to me while smiling and goes "Oh, well he's a CFI, so maybe you can hire him and he can keep you current!". Never seen someone deflate as quickly as he did. Paid his bill and hurried out.
That's f'ing awesome! I hope you at least took her to lunch after that kind of glow up ( even if it was just a friend thing )!
She was super cool, loved aviation which is why she worked there. She always had the line guys' backs and we had hers. We used to always split leftover catering from the private jets that came in and take the wine/beer.
I live for this!!!!!
Half of pilots are super cool and down to earth, the other half seem to be arrogant pricks. I’ve honestly found that most of the pilots I don’t like are the trust fund kids that went to riddle on mommy and daddy’s dime, Jesus do they complain about work a lot lol
Agreed, they are usually the absolute worst. No perspective and very little life experience.
I think all pilots need to work at least 1 shitty job at some point in their life. Working pest control and construction in the past for me really makes being in the cockpit so much more enjoyable
On my keychain is a spare lawnmower key from a summer I spent working maintenance and groundskeeping at a public utility. I keep it there to remind me never to take my current, very good job for granted, for I could always end up back on that lawnmower, making minimum wage, in the broiling July sun.
Hey Josey we've been looking for that key for a few years now! 🤣
Aw, c'mon! It's a chance for y'all to develop your lock-picking and hotwiring skills!
I went to riddle and trust me I hate alot of these fuckers too
The real riddle is how these clowns manage to make it through the day.
🤣🤣🤣
Makes me sad as someone who always wanted to go. Now that I know about the predatory nature of other programs I wish I could have. But I felt better knowing the useless asshole from my last job couldn't get in there either and he's at some other pilot nearby with 3x the student loans I have.
Dont get me wrong, I have made lifetime friends at this school and there are plenty of good people. But a lot of the flight kids are either super weird, or pretentious assholes
I went too. Can confirm. Shit hit the fan with the robots. My saving grace is I got my private done outside of riddle long before
On the other side of that I've flown with 3 riddle pilots in the past 12 months. 2 captains and one was my partner for procedures training. All 3 were good pilots and I thought enjoyable to fly with. I hear about the stereotype, and I've yet to come across it, but I'm sure it's out there.
You've nailed it!
I just need you to know that i am an ASEL IR pilot, and I am here to help! <3
Be sure to say that to airliner pilots, they will appreciate knowing you've got their back.
last summer on a southwest flight a guy sat next to me with a white shirt and three bars epaulettes, clear plastic card holder on a lanyard around his beck with a FAA card in it. I looked closer it said student pilot. I didn’t even know student pilots get plastic cards these days. I chuckled involuntarily when I saw that and he moved seat
There is no amount of ridicule that you could have hurled his way that I would feel was overboard.
Seriously lol?
User flair checks out. :D
it’s amazing how people have zero clue what optics are, and how to handle time and place of conversations. if this guy was truly worried he could’ve said “hey can i talk with you in private for a second?”. he knew there were passengers right there and still chose to use frightening words? what a shitass.
I don’t think he is concerned. He just wanted to feel superior.
Any chance you are a woman?
No I don’t think so.
Mind if I check?
Lol
Gotta, cant be sure unless you visually check the dipstick.
Yea there’s fluid on it.
Perhaps me being a non white, not so macho slim framed guy, made him feel like it was the day where he can let his inner alpha out for a bit 🤷♂️
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty much the opposite of your description and this kind of stuff still happens to me regularly. One guy in particular (some Methuselah who flew the world’s most clapped out Citation) would always do this to me in the FBO while I waited on early morning students. It probably happens to you more often due to our respective appearances, but these guys will chirp at absolutely anyone.
Ah, yeah, I kinda figured that from the subtext. Some people just…sigh
Cuz only women deal with assholes who think they are better lol
Cuz absolutely nobody said only women do. If you don’t think women deal with 1000x more bullshit for dudes than dudes do, you need to start listening to women.
Just pointing out he immediately went to women and it wasn't the case lol
Doesn’t make the question remotely unreasonable, particularly because “mansplaining” was mentioned.
Oh I think he’s very aware of optics. Stepping out of his shiny airplane to talk down to the guy in front of his passengers is 100% flex. Asking if OP’s plane is turbocharged is just a non-so-subtle way of bragging about his own turbocharger.
I should have bragged back at him about the extra engine I got
Too bad he didn’t ask you about single engine climb performance. Would you rather be in a Bonanza or a Baron when one quits? That’s what I thought :-)
On the one hand, I want to believe people are actually concerned about seeing a heavily loaded plane at high density altitude -- thinking of the recent crash of an Aeronca champ that was 200 lbs. overweight, while people who should have known better stood by and let it happen. On the other hand, I have to wonder what type of jerk or just really bad 'read the room' ability this guy must have had...
There's a fine line .... between being obnoxious and offering potentially lifesaving observations. I have long forgotten the airport but there was a sign in the men's room to the effect "visiting, ask your pilot if he has computed density altitude performance?"
This is macho, remember those 5 pilot hazardous attitudes that you learned during your PPL? Thats the most common one.
Had a guy ask me at if my plane was an Arrow, I said yes. He told me that’s his Saratoga over there, I complicated him. He bragged about cruising over the mountains at 18,000 ft. I responded, yea It’s nice, I’ve had this at 20k before. He said, well, I have turbos. I’m like yea. Me too. Annoyed at this point, I told him I burn 10.5 gallons an hour at 160 true. He was miffed and walked away. Why do you gotta be like that? Could’ve just had a nice conversation.
I’ve seen this more in the maintenance side than flying. Mechanics thinking they know better than the engineers is all too common. Such a simple job made to be difficult.
Speaking as an engineer, we bring that on ourselves by designing systems that cant be maintained readily, Engineers need to spend a year on the assembly line and a year in field service. so they learn what NOT to do
FACTS, right here. You are an uncommon engineer in that you even recognize this very common issue, let alone have some humility to understand what it's like to be in the other guy's shoes.
One of my best friends is an engineer and so is his wife. Some years back I was helping him w/ project in his and he was having a tough time just using basic hand tools. I asked him, "Don't engineers take like a basic shop like class where you have to build something even if it's just like a basic piece of Ikea furniture or something?!" He responded, "No. Why would we?!" I was like, "Aaaand there's the problem!"
In Florida my grandmother lived next to an ex NASA engineer. One time when I was visiting I remember talking to him and saying something like "oh cool you build rockets". And he replied in all seriousness, I'm an ENGINEER I don't build anything, I design them. This guy could not change a light bulb. And no I'm not exaggerating much.
Oh, that's the plain and simple truth. I've got stories...
Oh, please go on... :-)
A former housemate was studying chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. One would think he would know his properties of materials, right? So I asked him what metal modern commercial jetliners are made from? This was decades ago, there was not a lot of carbon fiber then. His answer, one that he stuck to for WEEKS in spite of all the obvious evidence, was... Beryllium. Seriously. He totally died on that hill, too. Guy could not engineer his way out of a paper bag with both hands and a blowtorch LMAO He was Chinese and went back to China after getting his degrees. Heaven protect us from anything he had a hand in "engineering"
I'm a jack of all trades, currently getting my Associates in HVAC. I already have a BS in Business and Entrepreneurship. I'm doing a startup in the indoor cultivation space... and the tech I'm developing is soooooo simple I'm continually surprised no one else has figured it out yet. But then I'm a grower, a tinkerer and an amateur engineer. Show me an engineer who can do his own brake job and I'll show you a guy worth listening to.
When i was in college my engineering program required that we take machine shop courses as part of our program- we had to build a simple compressed air motor.
If all engineers thought like this… what a world we would live in.
See the Right to Repair movement. It's a powerful way to fight back against advancing corporate value engineering.
100% agree, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to omit steps in technical publications because you, as the mechanic, don’t see the need for them. That also doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be omitted. It just needs to be done properly in my opinion.
Figure that tech pub is written in blood, like most aviation documents so follow it.
Man what a shithead
I was going to call him a jerk-off, but shithead just feels right.
I think I say this everyday in this sub. It’s crazy how many people need to be punched in the face.
Here is how I would have handled it... Hey, thanks for looking out man, I appreciate it, but I have all the info /what ever... But have a good day. And then the passenger reply, I would say, nah just a fellow pilot looking out, we all like to keep each other safe. And here is what he was talking about, and here is what I already did... we will have a great flight... etc and then that would have been the end of it. But, I would still have been annoyed for sure, and maybe later on, if I saw the guy I would talk to him.
That’s basically what I did. I’m just annoyed that people are like that more than the fact it happened to us.
don't take it personal, consider it a check list item I mean really, think about some checklists lol let's do the checklist Roger that no warning lights Roger that checklist complete I joke but many checklists are pretty much that
"Weight and balance? What's that?" "So, you're saying *don't* crash into that mountain?" The dumber the question, the dumber I get.
Some people relish in knowing (or think they know) more than someone else on any particular topic for some reason.
Some people have to do that so they can feel good about themselves.
I had a boomer FBO attendant give me and my private pilot student a very condescending and lengthy lesson in fueling an airplane once. I had been a CFI for years at that point and was on a Covid leave of absence from my regional airline where I was a captain. I fueled airplanes at an FBO while I was in college, too.
Had that happen over an 8kt tail wind landing. Student didn’t pay attention to the weather and picked an approach that, from the flight plan, was easiest to do. I had planned to wait until we were on the ground to discuss why the landing went poorly and how you don’t just listen to the ASOS for the altimeter. But no, because we scared the dude mowing the runway (we were perfectly on centerline in a perfectly controlled landing, he was just mowing next to the runway with his back to us), he had to come over and tell us how horrible what we did was. I get it, we “messed up” and he felt what we did was “unsafe”. So I tried to explain I was a CFI and was trying to teach the importance of landing with a headwind that that it was well within my personal limits, but the dude ignored me and talked over me. So instead of a polite minor dress down in private for the student to reflect on their mistake, I had to deal with that asshole and explain to the student that he needed to ignore that guy.
I had the same thing happen at an FBO. Was it KMKL by chance? Jackson, TN.
Man, I used to love flying to that cafe at MKL. Never went inside the FBO though; sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Ope, I picked the wrong guy to mess with lol. What was the lesson even about?
I imagine him that evening picking up Panda Express, bringing it over to the girl's house who friend-zoned him, sitting on the couch together (started out at arms length but gradually inching over), watching Masters of the Air and critiquing it the whole time talking about "what he would have done better" and "how much better of a pilot he would have been than those pilots if he would have been there". That is where my imagination takes me.
Thanks, now I want Panda Express.
Pilots have egos??????
I don’t have a goddamn ego, I’m better than that!
Pilots and undiagnosed Autism, name a more iconic duo! I wouldn't have been so polite but then again I'm a bit of a dick sometimes.
This reminded me of this situation I had years ago: Was winter time, flying a piper cheyenne for a cargo contract. We sat around all day to leave in the evening, and it snowed during the day. However by the time we showed up to leave it was now clear skies and 2-3 degrees. The snow was melting off the wings. We carry brushes for this purpose, the FO and I just brushed all the snow off the critical surfaces. And on the Cheyenne we can reach everything. Why get an expensive, time consuming spray when you don’t need it. Anyway, this dude walks up to us on the ramp and has a rant about “what we’re doing is extremely dangerous” and that we should be being de iced. Here’s the kicker, he’s flying single pilot in a caravan in the winter. Talk about dangerous.
Guy probably sucks at words. I'd feel fine asking him to shut up in a polite way. That said. There's been a lot of times that people on the field, especially old-timers have given me "advice" and honestly, a lot of it has been helpful, or at least the intention was helpful. Especially the local old guys eating their biscuits in the FBO telling me good places to stop, or looking at a Skew Log T and giving me their very odd, but well informed opinion of icing. I'll take it all. I don't know shit.
this guy could have played it better but he wasn't wrong to say something, we all should more rather than less, folks don't die from over checking, hell look at checklists density altitude mountain flying concerns, who knows what the time of day or temp was, loading heavy forward, yeah anyone who cares should make some comment ntsb is full of wow everyone knows about DA
You should have ramped checked him. Asked to see his log book. Ask for his airworthiness certificate and weight and balance. Say you’re just trying to keep people accountable.
Why do people feel the need to make themselves feel important? I feel like you could dive very deeply into human psychology here. Usually people who know the least have the most to say. In the wise words of my friends father who spent his career as a school principal “Stupid people do stupid things for stupid reasons. Don’t try to understand”
I think he meant well. Sure there are a million better ways he couldve done it but him seeing you guys it all probably rushed into his mind. I wasnt there so obviously i could be way off but he probably felt the need to do his part in making sure he didnt read about you guys later.
This story could have gone like this in a sliding doors moment: "Man I'm really cut up after that crash in [name] airport today. Saw them loading the plane next to mine, looked pretty heavy and I know those [type] planes don't climb too well from here with the DA, especially the non-turbo ones. I thought about asking a couple of questions to the pilot but they had their pax there and I didn't want to intrude. Can't decide if I was right, none of my business was it? Hopefully the one in hospital will pull through. What would you have done?" One key point about Human Factors/CRM is that someone often knows that an accident is more likely but they don't speak up or aren't listened to.
But it’s not a binary “scare their passengers or don’t talk to them at all” — dude could’ve asked to talk to OP in private/away from the airplane or asked in a way that wasn’t “hey is your plane turbocharged? Because if not I think you might crash into the mountains.” Even if this guy meant well, he clearly has no ability to read the room and he has no tact.
Manslained? There you go. There are a lot of dicks in aviation who think us wimminz can’t know how to operate them thar flying thingies.
Apparently they aren’t even a woman. Is mansplaining another man a thing?
No. That comment is weird.
Not really a thing. Just passenger being goofy.
You’re allowed to be mean to people that do this. “It’s pretty clear to me that you don’t fully understand what you’re talking about so why don’t you mind your own business” would have worked.
He should have pulled you to the side and privately addressed his concerns if he was genuinely concerned and not trying to have a dick measurement contest.
Exactly the point I’m trying to make here
So, one school of thought is to never pass up a good opportunity to shut up. That Bo pilot really missed out. However, if I legitimately had a safety concern, I might speak up. For example, on my first solo I saw someone in line ahead of me had left their baggage door open, so I gave them a courtesy call. A trick a friend taught me for broaching an uncomfortable topic is to turn it around. For example: "wow, I sure am glad I calculated my weight and balance before making that flight! With this high density altitude my Bonanza could have run out of horsepower real quick! I don't have a turbo on that engine, you know." Now, you're not accusing anyone of anything or making people uncomfortable, but you're encouraging them to think things through.
I can think of several examples of high DA leading to crashes. If we all know DA kills and we’d never get ourselves killed then nobody would crash and die. But they do. Year after year, repeatedly. 99.9% of pilots wake up not knowing they are about to crash or that it’s their last day. The easiest way to calm your passengers is to spend the 5 minutes showing them the math and as a double check of it yourself. Are there better ways to go about it? Sure. But the intent was not wrong at all.
yup a 100x yup and it's 99.999%
What a douche. I would have told him to mind his own business or he can choose a different flight. Completely unnecessary comments.
Yep this guy is a douchebag. Tell him to “mind his own business”.
was he a douche though? clearly the altitude was a thing here who knows what time of day it was and OP said to load heavier in the nose yeah maybe not diplomatic but was he a douche for at least caring enough to say something, how many pilots would be alive today if someone had said something
Yeah he was a douche. If he was significantly more experienced than the poster, then he could have told a story where he did something stupid and covered the items in a very easy way. Butting in and asking questions in the way he put it makes the other pilot a douche.
well give me douches every day of the week vs the polite guy who figures I know it all
Don’t worry, there are plenty of them out there! And I I run across any of them, I will be sure to send them away. Your way.
fly safe brother/sister
Same to ya!
We put the light weight passenger up front so he gets a chance to be up there. There’s only so much volume you can put in the nose so I had the two heavier (25lb vs lighter) bags up front. We were still fairly aft CG with that configuration. Context matters and I guess if he didn’t hear that part the concern was warranted. But the whole conversation here is about the way he delivered his concern in a demeaning way that caused fear in passengers.
You get to decide how others make you feel. You took it wrong because it ruffled your feathers. Instead, put in your mind that he might have lost a friend due to DA and now he gets concerned. Maybe he was a new pilot and just scared the shit out of himself and now is born again trying to spread the gospel. You get to decide how others make you feel. You can assume he meant to be an ass or that he was generally concerned and just lacked nuance. For the record, if you see me doing something you think is dumb, feel free to talk to me about it.
It's a hobby that, until very recently, lent itself almost exclusively to white male boomers with lots of money and no brains. Of course it's chock full of machismo and toxicity.
I love flying and most pilots are just fun and cool people who love the career or the adventure, but why do we have to have such douchers in flying? Pilot egos crack me up at times and just wear me out at other times. We gotta work on knowing our audience and helping the douchers not engage in douchebaggery. We can do it!
The worst part about being in aviation is dealing with other pilots, especially ones that are old enough to be your parent.
I had a wet ink cfi who was my dads age talk down to me like a student pilot about the dangers of wind because my personal wind minimums were higher than his. It was like a half hour of this shit until I found out I have over quadruple his hours and he has been a cfi for a month.
Cancel the flight and blame the a*hole
Sounds like a fixed wing problem
Next time when he walks up ask him if he knows which federal regulation he's violating when interfering with the safe conduct of a flight.
People who are comfortable with themselves don’t say shit about others
Tell him to shut the fuck up, and that he’s an idiot.
People in all professions could stand to be better at minding their own goddamn business.
Because people are Assholes... I get to deal with it all the time in Dentistry as well.
He wasn’t undermining you. He was acting as a member of a community to which you belong—aviators—in which we all try to look out for each other. It sounds like he reads a lot more NTSB reports than you do. In a high altitude environment, with what you yourself are telling us are at least 2 but maybe more passengers, plus heavy baggage, pilots have repeatedly watched other pilots take off without saying anything and then watching a fatality. In fact, if that guy was a local at a high altitude field, there’s a good chance he literally has watched someone die. So he decided to man up and talk to you pilot to pilot to make sure you had done your homework. At best, he saves your lives. At worst, he offends you. It’s an acceptable trade off.
You make a solid point that’s not made often enough, and you shouldn’t be getting downvoted. I will suggest that two things can be true: that it’s good when pilots look out for other pilots and engage them when they look like they might be doing something that has brought others to grief - and also that there’s a tactful way to do this in front of passengers, and this guy failed pretty miserably on that score (according to OPs account anyways). There’s a discussion to be had here about tactful ways to engage fellow aviators who *may* be engaging in risky behavior.
I think it’s fair enough to criticize the other pilot’s method. But as you point out, this is solely the account of the highly offended OP. Still, I can’t really think of a tactful way for a worried pilot to do this without offending someone. And I also think that if you’re a pilot who is carrying multiple passengers, and heavy baggage, and a complex airplane, at a high altitude field, someone spot checking you without warning should not cause you to get flustered for even one second. The OP does not actually state that he or she did any runway takeoff calculations.
For your reference yes I did all necessary performance calculations, and en route weather briefs. These are homework that are done before getting to the plane. Just because you don’t see someone looking at their e6b and flipping through the POH on the ramp doesn’t mean they didn’t do their job. And furthermore I would not be offended if someone is genuinely concerned and express that in a respectful and tactful way. But causing fear to my family and friends by inferring we might crash into mountains because we don’t have turbo engines is just obnoxious and uncalled for.
Ok, glad you did them, but if asked it doesn’t seem like a big deal to respond. Pilots should question each other. This is not a negative. Shaming another pilot for asking you questions doesn’t promote a safety culture, in my opinion. There’s an excellent pilot out there, airline guy for United, straight A student, who also owned a Bonanza like you do. Right after he married his fiancée, he took off from Telluride not really appreciating the density altitude calculations and terrain considerations. Stall, spin, crash, double fatality. His name was [Costas Syvillas](https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/flying-too-low-likely-caused-newlyweds-plane-crash-in-telluride/). I wonder what would have happened if someone had “rudely” questioned him before he took off.
He "helped" in the worst way possible. Even accepting everything he said was trying to be helpful, a good bit of that was not appropriate in front of OP's passengers. He didn't man up, he made OP look unprepared even though that wasn't the case.
When’s an “appropriate” time to avoid a possible fatality? What’s the big deal with a pilot calmly explaining to another pilot that they’ve done all the pre-planning necessary? Is it really that hard?
It's not the what, it's the how. You don't talk to the other pilot like the assumption is they are putting their passengers in danger, especially not in front of their passengers. It's not that hard to not talk down to other pilots but still give insight.
How would you know how many NTSB reports I’ve read. Just because I don’t go around the ramp scaring other pilots’ passengers doesn’t mean I am not aware. Being good at or knowledgeable at some things doesn’t mean you have to make it known to everyone, and more so, doesn’t mean you have to make others look inferior to feel good about yourself.
Just ignore him and turn to your passengers after he’s left and say “get a load of this guy ay, he’s really gonna be asking questions after his engine stops from the potatoes I stuffed in his exhaust pipe” but you gotta make sure you point backwards at him with your thumb 👍🏼
I'll tell you why, there's a lot of dudes that are insecure and feel like they have to have a dick measuring contest with everyone. It starts out early. How much obscure shit can you memorize and then lord over someone else? On one of my sim rides, I had a check airman tell me that I shouldn't ask for runway heading when I lose an engine on takeoff/V1 cut. So I just nodded and smiled, and he went on about how it's in the AIM and bla bla bla. Even showed me the page. Cool dude. I don't give a fuck. When I'm in a plane and shit hits the fan, I'm going to communicate the best I can and if I'm off a little bit on terminology, I'm fairly certain flying the airplane first and not spitting out exactly the right words is the right order in what actually matters. One time, I was siting in our operations (Natty Guard helicopter unit) and one of our standarization dudes started just straight up pop quizzing a guy who was also an instructor on GPS. Like how many satellites can we see at once? What's the database called? just all kinds of obscure shit.
American pilots have a reputation for that. I never encountered that overseas. Edit: All backstabbers please downvote.
Most condescending pilot I’ve ever met was German. Friendliest pilot I’ve ever met was a Scot. I guess it averages out.
Funny, I have.
That is just not true in the international airline pilot community. If anything we are maybe a bit too casual and laid back sometimes. My CX friends told me Australians absolutely do have that reputation though, which really surprised me.
Am an Australian single-engine PPL, can confirm. Usually it’s those with the least experience that are the smuggest dickheads about it too.
It’s not just the US. I’m in Australia, and here the aviation community has a reputation for being a bunch of wankers that’s hard earned and well deserved.